Yasmine Beale-Rivaya
Dr. Yasmine Beale-Rivaya is a Professor of Spanish Linguistics at Texas State University. Her research centres on language contact, change, and borrowing in borderland communities of Medieval Iberia. Working with multilingual primary resources, Yasmine focuses on evidence of language practice, contact, and interchange between multilingual communities and multifaceted peoples such as the Mozarabs (Arabized-Christians), Mudejars (Christianized-Muslims), and Moriscos (Muslim Converts) living along borderland areas in Medieval Iberia and by-products resulting from this contact. Dr Beale-Rivaya compares the linguistic experiences of these multilingual communities in the Medieval Mediterranean to those of Spanish-speaking or people of Spanish linguistic heritage along borderland communities between the US and Mexico. These two lines of research have led her to think about patterns of minorization and linguistic segregation from a broader perspective. This work has resulted in securing the NEH Distinguished Professorship in Teaching in the Humanities (2021-2024) and the development of the digital humanities project titled Minority and Minoritized Languages and Cultures. The open education resource digital project maps, describes, and catalogs contemporary minoritized languages in order to bring more attention to lesser-known languages in an approachable manner.
