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Bozho
Bozho
I am currently a Humanities Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago where I received my PhD in linguistics in 2025. While there, I studied the grammars employed by second language users of Potawatomi in my dissertation Documenting Conversation in New Varieties of Potawatomi. As a member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, I conduct fieldwork in my home community and across the diaspora in Michigan, Kansas, and Wisconsin.
In addition to my academic work, I have been engaged in Potawatomi language revitalization for almost two decades. Since I began learning the language in 2007, I have been working on increasing access to language resources and expanding communicative proficiency in my community. It is the obligations and duties I have to those who came before me and those who raised me that guide my research program as well as my life as a Bodéwadmi kwé.
Research
Research
My research focuses on Potawatomi and language revitalization. In particular, I am interested in morphosyntax, discourse and pragmatic phenomena, language and identity, and new and L2 speakers. Currently, I am most interested in the grammars of second language users like me. We constitute the largest group of Potawatomi speakers by number and form distinct communities of practice. As such, I approach the study of revitalization from a variationist perspective rooted in land, locality, and belonging. Learn more about my research program here.
Selected Publication & Presentations
Selected Publication & Presentations
Kasper, Corinne. Talking Good Indian: The Context of Potawatomi Reclamation, Invited talk at American Association for Applied Linguistics, Chicago, IL
Kasper, Corinne, Rhonda Purcell, Carla Collins, Ėthë Bodwéwadmimwat. Preservation, Collaboration, Local Identity in the Potawatomi Diaspora. International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation 9, Honolulu, HI
Kasper, Corinne & Wilkerson, Kabl. An End to Assimilation?: Impacts and Legacies of the Indian Reorganization Act on the Potawatomi Language. Native American and Indigenous Studies Association 2025 Annual Meeting, Oklahoma City, OK
Kasper, Corinne. A Brief Survey of Documenting the Potawatomi Language, In Blaire Morseau, ed., “As Sacred to Us” Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Stories in their Contexts. Michigan State University Press.
Kasper, Corinne. Revisiting the Potawatomi é- Preverb, Proceedings from the 52nd Annual Algonquian Conference.
Complete CV:
CV_Kasper_2026_May.pdfExtracurricular Activities
Extracurricular Activities
I dance women's woodlands and work on appliqué patterns and beadwork for my regalia. In my freetime, I am also an amateur boxer.
Contact Me
cek1 [AT] uchicago [DOT] edu
Photo by Sam Strutz / Sam’s Photography LLC
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