Western Kentucky University

Department of English

I grew up in southern Ohio, accounting for my "special" English. In college I traveled to Mexico to take care of my language requirement and fell in love with the people and the language. After college, I joined the Peace Corps and served three years on the Dominican-Haitian border. I mostly worked in rural development in a small village. I organized reforestation and agro-forestry projects as well as serving as the co-director of a center for malnourished children. In one village, we built a local food cooperative. After Peace Corps, I returned to the States to get a Master's degree in Linguistics, and then left the country to teach at a university in Mexico for three years. While there, I discovered caving and since then have spent most of my free weekends and vacations bouncing pits in Mexico and TAG (the connecting area of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia) or exploring and map making in Kentucky's Mammoth Cave. I even met my husband in Mammoth Cave. After getting my doctorate in Linguistics, I lived in Georgia for a few years, where I taught linguistics at Columbus State University and then we moved to Tucson, Arizona where I taught at the University of Arizona. It took me almost 6 years of trying, but I am finally back here living above the world's largest cave and teaching at a great school. If I don't answer your email on the weekend, I'm probably underground!

Dr. Elizabeth Grace Winkler
Assistant Professor of Linguistics
Cherry Hall 109e,
elizabeth.winkler@wku.edu
Contact me @ (270)745-2415