Erika H. Gilson
Senior Lecturer in Turkish
Near Eastern Studies
Offie location: 211 Frist Campus Center
Campus Phone:
Campus email: ehgilson@princeton.edu
webpage: http://www.princeton.edu/~ehgilson
A native of Istanbul, Erika Gilson studied Turkology at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. She has been teaching all levels of Turkish and Introductory Ottoman, at Columbia University and, since 1989, at Princeton.
Committed to the teaching of the truly 'foreign' languages in academic settings in the US, she has been heavily involved in the efforts at the national level to improve Turkish language instruction as well as the teaching of less commonly taught languages in general. She is a founding member of the American Association of Teachers of Turkic Languages and the National Council of Organizations of Less Commonly Taught Languages.
In recognition of her services to the field, she is the recipient of two prestigious award, the A. Ronald Walton Award for Distinguished Service in the field if LCTLs and the Jere L. Bacharach Service Award of the Middle East Studies Association.
Her interests include the Turkish language reform movement, its effect on the native speaker and its effect on the development of Turkish; the historical grammar of Turkish; borrowings across cultures based on the Turkic experience; how speakers of typologically different languages think; and technology and language acquisition.