Speaking Arizona is a project designed to address major gaps in our understanding of the role of speaking and language in creating and reinventing the identities of different communities in Arizona. The Phoenix metropolitan area is rapidly changing multicultural area with shifting demographic patterns, and the state itself represents a unique mosaic of language communities. It is our plan to meet regularly during the 2006-2007 academic year, reading and discussing Arizona and styles of speaking associated with different communities of practice such as mining or ranching in Arizona.

American culture is frequently reconstituted as new populations continue to arrive to U.S. destinations with the intentions of staying. To claim that this experience is uniquely American, or even contemporary, is to close to our eyes to the historical, social, and global realities of migration that have constituted the diverse communities that have truly always been our human legacy.

Controversies over public art and community deliberation processes behind them are rife for analysis--both as expert participants in process or critics after the social explosion. Whether it's a monument to a tragedy, historical marker or freeway art, public art is a source of tension within communities as the memory over the events and persons are negotiated. This cluster will bring together scholars in the discussionof situated controversies and their transdisciplinary roots.

This cluster will look backward from present debates to discussions of the African Diaspora as they occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries. These discussions usually took place in the context of the articulation of ideas of Pan Africanism. Thus the title of series of the sessions for next year is Pan Africanism and the African Diaspora: Some Connections, Some Departures. The idea will be to read some of the original thought of Pan Aficanists such as Martin Delany, E.W. Blyden, W.E.B.

This research cluster is devoted to investigating the interactions between urban values, urban systems and spaces, and inhabitants of the city by focusing on the cultural dimensions of urban planning, urban systems, and the experiences of urban life. This cluster will meet monthly to discuss a common theme: Identity and Environment in the Modern City. This theme is both narrow enough to encourage a more focused set of readings but broad enough to be welcoming to new participants.

This research cluster seeks to bring together scholars of migration from across the university to engage in discussion and presentation of research with the goal of developing a more transdisciplinary analysis of the human experience in migration. This cluster focuses on two themes that sometimes exist in tension: migration, or geographic movement often motivated by economic or relational considerations; and the idea of belonging--what poet and writer Luis Francia describes as the idea of home--that is often expressed as intangible desire.

Languages change for two reasons, language external and language internal. External reasons involve social and political changes that affect language use and internal changes are determined by the internal mechanisms of our cognitive capacities. In this research cluster, we will study the connection between internal and external factors and provide descriptions of certain cycles of change. Linguistic cycles are a perfect instance where external and internal reasons come together.

Note: This cluster was also the first to receive the Jenny Norton award for a research project that focuses on women.

This cluster examines the role of Comparative Literature in the 21st century to respond to the ever-more urgent need for cross-cultural understanding under globalization. Discussions will focus on intersections among language, visual culture, literary production, and gender as potential categories of analysis for comparative studies across national cultures.