Susan Gal (born 1949) is the Mae & Sidney G. Metzl Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology, of Linguistics, and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago^[1] She is the author or co-author of several books and numerous articles on linguistic anthropology, gender and politics, and the social history of Eastern Europe.^[2]

Education and career

Gal received her B.A. in psychology and anthropology from Barnard College in 1970 and received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1976.^[3][4] She taught at Rutgers University from 1977 to 1994, and then moved to the University of Chicago, serving as the Chair of the Department of Anthropology between 1999 and 2002.^[5]

Honors and awards

Gal received the Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2002 for the study of language ideologies and political authority during and after socialism,^[6] and has been awarded the SSRC-ACLS International Fellowship, as well as Fulbright and NIMH Fellowships.^[5]

In 2007 Gal was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[7]

Gal is a member of the editorial board of American Anthropologist.^[8]

Research

Her first book, Language Shift: Social Determinants of Linguistic Change in Bilingual Austria, was published in 1979 and examined the linguistic situation of a Hungarian minority in the town of Burgenland, Austria. As Richard Coates states in his review of the book, the book argues that "language shift is essentially a symbolic change correlated with the changing relative status of the value-systems which each language symbolizes, and not a simple function of industrialization, urbanization or some other large-scale social change."^[9] Gal co-wrote the book The Politics of Gender After Socialism (2000) with Gail Kligman, which won the 2001 Heldt Prize (awarded by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies),^[7] and co-edited the anthology Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life after Socialism with Kligman. These books examine the complex relationship between ideas and practices of gender and political economic change, taking the post-Soviet transition across a number of East Central European countries as case studies.

Selected publications

• Gal, Susan (2009). "Language and Political Space". In P. Auer & J.E. Schmidt (ed.). Language and Space. Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 33–50. ISBN 9783110180022.
• Gal, Susan (2006). "Linguistic Anthropology". In K. Brown (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-08-044854-1.
• Gal, Susan (2005). "Language ideologies compared: Metaphors and circulations of public and private". Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 15 (1): 23–37. doi:10.1525/jlin.2005.15.1.23.
• Gal, Susan (2002). "A Semiotics of the Public/Private Distinction". Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 13 (1): 77–95. doi:10.1215/10407391-13-1-77. S2CID 144808547.
• Gal, Susan; Woolard, Kathryn (2001). Languages and Publics: The Making of Authority. Manchester: St. Jerome’s Press. ISBN 1900650436.
• Gal, Susan; Kligman, Gail (2000). The Politics of Gender After Socialism: A Comparative Historical Essay. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691048949.
• Gal, Susan; Kligman, Gail (2000). Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life after Socialism. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691048680.
• Gal, Susan (1989). "Language and Political Economy". Annual Review of Anthropology. 18: 345–367. doi:10.1146/annurev.an.18.100189.002021.
• Gal, Susan (1979). Language Shift: Social Determinants of Linguistic Change in Bilingual Austria. Academic Press. ISBN 0122737504.
• Gal, Susan (1978). "Peasant men can't get wives: Language change and sex roles in a bilingual community". Language in Society. 7 (1): 1–16. doi:10.1017/s0047404500005303. S2CID 144342959.