Robert Vann
Robert Vann
(Rob)
Professor Emeritus
Mailing address:
Department of Spanish
Western Michigan University
1903 W Michigan Ave
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5338 USA
Western Michigan University
1903 W Michigan Ave
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5338 USA
Education:
- Ph.D., Iberoromance Linguistics and Philology, The University of Texas-Austin, 1996
- M.A., Spanish Linguistics, The University of Illinois-Urbana, 1992
Research Interests:
- Documentation and digital preservation of the Spanish spoken in Catalonia
- Social, cultural, and linguistic effects of language contact and bilingualism in Catalonia
- Ways of constructing linguistic identities and ideologies in Catalonia
Bio:
A specialist in Spanish language, culture, and society in Catalonia, Dr. Vann spent his academic career documenting ways of speaking and ideologies toward language, identity, and country in Barcelona. His research focused on the first generation of Catalans educated in their heritage language to grow up in a democratic Spain. During his career, Dr. Vann published over 30 refereed articles and two books: Materials for the sociolinguistic description and corpus-based study of Spanish in Barcelona: Toward a documentation of colloquial Spanish in naturally occurring groups (2009) and Documenting Gen '95er voices from Catalonia: Globalizing ideologies and ways of speaking (2026). Additionally, Dr. Vann created DARDOSIPCAT, the "Digital ARchive to DOcument Spanish In the Països CATalans," a one-of-a-kind international digital humanities project that makes robust language documentary resources available to researchers worldwide, free of charge.
During his 30 years in the classroom at WMU, Dr. Vann was passionate, dedicated, rigorous, and innovative. The architect of WMU’s Spanish linguistics curriculum, Dr. Vann proposed, designed, and taught 26 different undergraduate and graduate Spanish linguistics courses that had never been offered previously. Thanks largely to Dr. Vann’s efforts and advocacy, over time, required coursework in Spanish degree programs grew to incorporate Spanish linguistics, and, subsequently, Dr. Vann directed WMU's first doctoral dissertation in Spanish linguistics. Dr. Vann also rendered extensive university service by helping to establish WMU’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, directing the Universitat de Lleida student exchange program for five years, and conscientiously advising undergraduate students of Spanish for over a decade.