Brenna Reinhart Byrd | University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Brenna Reinhart Byrd

Associate Professor, German Studies

Director of Beginning German

Contact Information

brennabyrd@uky.edu

1003 Patterson Office Tower

(859) 257-3629

Education

2004-2010 Ph.D. Germanic Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Advisor: Christopher M. Stevens
2003-2004 Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany: Germanistik (via DAAD stipend)
2003 M.A., UCLA; Germanic Linguistics
2000 B.A., University of Texas at Austin: German with minor in Linguistics
1998-1999 Universität Kassel, Germany: Germanistik (via VDAC stipend)

Research Interests

Germanic Linguistics
Turkish-German identity
Hip Hop Studies
Style and Sociolinguistic Variation
Second Language Acquisition
History of the German Language
Game Studies
ConLangs
Proto-Indo-European
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies
Resistance Vernaculars

Affiliations

Folklore & Mythology
German Studies
Modern & Classical Languages Literatures & Cultures
Masters in Teaching World Languages
American Association for Teachers of German (AATG)
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)
Southern Conference on Language Teaching (SCOLT)
Kentucky World Languages Association

Curriculum Vitae (CV)

Funded Grants

Research and Creative Activities Support Program award, $3,000, to create linguistic puzzles for the video game Roots of the Ancients, with Andrew Byrd, 2020.
University of Kentucky Libraries Alternative Textbook Grant Program, $2,500, to continue work on a free OER textbook that teaches Proto-Indo-European through immersive lessons, with Andrew Byrd, 2020.
National Endowment for the Humanities – Digital Projects for the Public Discovery Grant: “The Anatolian Trail: An Indo-European Adventure,” $30,000, to work on the development of a video game to teach Proto-Indo-European linguistics, culture, and archaeology, Co-PI with Andrew Byrd, 2019.
University of Kentucky Libraries Alternative Textbook Grant Program, $2,500, to continue work on a free OER textbook that teaches Proto-Indo-European through immersive lessons, with Andrew Byrd, 2019.
Research and Creative Activities Support Program award, $5,000, to create artwork and voice-acted dialogue on The Anatolian Trail: An Indo-European Adventure, with Andrew Byrd, 2019.
AATG Netzwerk Deutsch funding for Kentucky Chapter Project Deshalb Deutsch!, $700, to create an annual competition and award prizes for students at UK to create videos advertising taking German courses, with Bess Dawson, 2018.
A&S Compressed Course Program, $5,000, to host Award-winning Scottish Playwright Alan McKendrick to co-teach a Compressed Course entitled “Translating for the Stage: How Language Style Affects ‘Successful’ Performance,” 2014.

Professional Development and Related Work Experience

University of Kentucky CELT Teaching Innovation Institute, 2022-2023.
University of Kentucky Arts & Sciences DEI Leaders retreat, Sept. 16, 2022.
Game Worldbuilding and Game World Logic Consultant for Sweet Baby, Inc., 2021-Present.
Linguistic Consultant and Dialect Coach for A44 Games, 2021-2022.
Diversity, Decolonization and the German Curriculum “Why/Whether German” Action Group Discussion, Jan 15, 2021.
KWLA Book Club: ACTFL's Words and Actions: Teaching World Languages Through the Lens of Social Justice, June 29 – July 27, 2020.
University of Kentucky Week of Teaching Virtual Symposium, April 27-May 1, 2020.
University of Kentucky Faculty Fellows Cohort 4: Multimodal Communication 2015-2017.
AATG Professional Development Seminar on Authentic Resources, presented by die Zentrallstelle für das Auslandsschulwesen (ZfA), Lexington, KY, April 2016.
Linguistic Consultant and Dialect Coach for Ubisoft’s video game Far Cry: Primal, 2014-2016.
Meeting Student Needs in College German Programs AATG 3-Day Faculty Seminar on Curriculum Development at the College Level, Georgetown University in Washington, DC, October 10-12, 2014.
A&S-CELT Hybridization Institute, MCLLC representative, UK, Sept. 2013.
Intellectual Inquiry UK Core Assessment: Humanities, UK, May 2012.
Instructional Technology Consultant, Center for Digital Humanities, UCLA, 2008-2010.

My Calendar

Selected Publications

Selected Publications:

“Teaching Proto-Indo-European as a Constructed Language,” with Andrew Byrd; Jeffrey Punske, Amy Fountain, and Nathan Sanders (eds.). Language Invention in Linguistics Pedagogy. Oxford University Press (September 2020).
“Supporting Graduate Students of Color in German Studies: A Syllabus,” Ervin Malakaj and Regine Criser (eds.). Diversity, Decolonialization, and the German Curriculum. Palgrave Macmillan (March 2020).
“Resistance Vernaculars in Turkish-German Hip-hop,” Justin Williams (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Hip Hop. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (April 2015)
"Media Representations of Turkish-German and Hip-Hop Language as a Uniform Ethnolect" In: Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Symposium About Language and Society - Austin. Texas Linguistic Forum 53. (2009)