Lecturer Emerita, Celtic Studies

Email: kkestrel@berkeley.edu

Degrees

A.B., University of California, Berkeley (Linguistics) 1971
M.A., University of California, Berkeley (Linguistics) 1973
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley (Linguistics) 1977

Teaching: Modern and Medieval Welsh Language and Literature; Old and Middle Irish; Medieval Welsh Poetry and Law; Poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym; Modern Celtic Cultures and Folklore; Celtic Romanticism; Celtic Literature; Celtic Christianity.

Research Interests

Celtic Specializations: Modern and Medieval Welsh Language and Literature; Celtic Linguistics; Cornish; Celtic Culture; Celtic Christianity; the Celtic Revival.

Native American Languages and Linguistics Specializations: California Indian languages, especially the Chumashan family; prehistoric contact between Polynesia and the Americas; deep linguistic relationships in the Americas.

Current Projects

Continuing investigation of linguistic evidence for prehistoric contact between Polynesia and the Americas.

Ella Young and other Celtic Revival figures in America.

Discovery and study of previously unknown early letters of Edward Sapir to John P. Harrington. Preparing to publish them.

Working on a full-scale intellectual biography of American linguist and ethnologist John P. Harrington, with particular emphasis on Harrington’s conceptual framework and an assessment of his work’s long-term importance to anthropological studies (in the broadest sense).

Selected Publications

(Co-editor, with Terry L. Jones) California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity. Papers from a March 2004 Society for California Archaeology Symposium on recent work in California prehistory. In press. Altamira Press, June 28, 2007.

(First author, with Terry L. Jones) “Linguistic Evidence for a Prehistoric Polynesia-Southern California Contact Event.” Anthropological Linguistics 47.4 (Winter 2005)

(With Terry L. Jones) “Diffusionism Reconsidered: Linguistic and Archaeological Evidence for Prehistoric Polynesian Contact with Southern California.” American Antiquity 70.3: 457-484.(July 2005)

“Finck, Franz Nikolaus (1867-1910).” Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd Edition, Edited by Keith Brown, Elsevier: Oxford 2006, Vol. 4:467

“Harrington, John Peabody (1884-1961).” Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd Edition, Edited by Keith Brown, Elsevier: Oxford 2006, Vol. 5:215.

“O’Rahilly, Thomas Francis (1882-1953).” Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd Edition, Edited by Keith Brown, Elsevier: Oxford 2006, Vol. 9:71.

“Ventris, Michael (1922-1956).” Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd Edition, Edited by Keith Brown, Elsevier: Oxford 2006, Vol. 13:399.

“Poetry and Pillowtalk” in Heroic Poets and Poetic Heroes in Celtic Tradition, Joseph F. Nagy and Leslie Ellen Jones eds. CSANA Yearbook 3. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003.