Dr. Kira Hall, Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology, has been awarded the title of Distinguished Professor, the highest designation the university awards to faculty. She shares this honor with six other outstanding CU faculty from across the CU System. This designation recognizes decades of exemplary scholarship, teaching innovation, and service that Dr. Hall has contributed within her twin arenas of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, and her status as one of the two founders of the field of sociocultural linguistics. Prof. Hall is a courageous, relentlessly innovative and path-breaking scholar–a theorist of language, sexuality, gender and social identity who creates community for scholars of language and gives voice to the marginalized, from Bay Area phone sex workers to hijras in Northern India to American teens living with autism. This designation is a significant achievement because Kira is the first ever member of the Linguistics department to receive it, and she is the only current faculty member from the CU Social Sciences division to bear this title. Only 136 University of Colorado faculty members from across all four campuses have been granted the title of Distinguished Professor since the designation was established at CU in 1977. The dossier submitted by Dr. Hall's nominators attests to the excellence and originality of Kira’s scholarship, her co-creation of the field of sociocultural linguistics, her development of the study of language, gender and sexuality, her dedication to her research and to the discipline, and her strong role in curricular innovation and supporting/mentoring students and junior scholars. In the words of one of her many eminent recommenders,
For approximately thirty years, [Prof. Hall’s] work has had an incisive impact on several fields whose focus lies on the relations between language and society. From very early on in her career, she emerged as one of the most innovative and forward-thinking linguists of her generation, taking the study of language in society in exciting new directions. And perhaps unsurprisingly so, since Dr. Hall waltzes through the complexities of the sociocultural study of language with conceptual finesse, theoretical abandon, and methodological rigor. For these reasons, I am sure she will do justice to the title of Distinguished Professor.
Congratulations, Distinguished Professor Kira Hall! Your scholarship and teaching have helped build CU Linguistics to the top 10 department it is today!