Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway

(she/her/hers)

Professor of Anthropology

Areas of Study

Anthropology

Education

BA, Oakland University, 2000
MA, University of Michigan, 2003
PhD, University Michigan, 2008

Biography

Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway’s research addresses the flexible multi-modal nature of communicative practices as well as the social factors that facilitate or limit that flexibility. She explores these dynamics through ethnographic work with deaf signers in Nepal, Malta, Germany, and the US, as well as by experimenting with the modalities and genres through which anthropological research can be produced and shared.

Fall 2025

Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology — ANTH 204

Graphic Anthropology — ANTH 357

Practicum in Anthropology - Full — ANTH 391F

Practicum in Anthropology - Half — ANTH 391H

Internships in Teaching - Full — ANTH 415F

Internships in Teaching - Half — ANTH 415H

Spring 2026

Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology — ANTH 204

Language, Disability, and Sensory Ecologies — ANTH 322

Practicum in Anthropology - Full — ANTH 391F

Practicum in Anthropology - Half — ANTH 391H

Internships in Teaching - Full — ANTH 415F

Internships in Teaching - Half — ANTH 415H

Linguistics Portfolio — LING 500

Publications include:

Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika and Promina Shrestha (2025). “How Did We Meet?”: Experiments with Ethnographic Comics in Nepal. Journal of American Folklore, Volume 138, Number 550, Fall 2025, pp. 458-467
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika and Anne Pfister (2024). Language Access and Deaf Activism in Mexico and Nepal. In, Riley, Kathleen, Bernard C. Perley, and Inmaculada M. García Sánchez (Eds.) Language and Social Justice: A Global Perspective. Bloomsbury Publishers.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika and Kristen Snoddon (2023). Sign Languages. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika and Annabelle Xerri (2022). #Deafmum: A Deaf Maltese Activist’s Strategies for Addressing Hearing Parents of Deaf Children. Practicing Anthropology.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2021). Shadows and Mirrors: Spatial and Ideological Perspectives on Sign Language Competency. The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 31(3): 320-334.
Das, Sonia N., Christina P. Davis, and Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway (2021). Judith T. Irvine and the Social Life of Scholarship. The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 31(3): 316-319
Das, Sonia N., Christina P. Davis, and Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway (Eds.) (2021). Special Issue: Essays in Honor of Judith T. Irvine. The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 31(3).
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2021). Media of Medium: Language Boundaries and Multimodal Semiotic Ecologies in Nepali Schools for Deaf Students. In Davis, Christina and Chaise LaDousa (eds.) Language Medium and Difference: Schools and Society in South Asia, 71-92. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hoffmann-Dilloway (2021). Images of Language and Imagistic Language in Nepal's Older and Vulnerable Deaf Person's Project. Semiotic Review
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2020). Writing What we Feel: Written Sign Language Literacy and Intersomaticity in a German Classroom. In Kusters, Green, Harrelson, and Snodden (Eds.), Sign Language Ideologies in Practice, 197-218. Mouton De Gruyter.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2020). Figure (of Personhood) Drawing: Scaffolding Signing and Signers in Nepal. Signs in Society 8(1): 35-61.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2018). Linguistic Anthropology in 2017: It Could be Otherwise. American Anthropologist 120 (2): 278-290.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2018). Feeling your Own (or Someone Else’s) Face: Writing Signs from the Expressive Viewpoint. Language and Communication 61: 88-101.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2016). Signing and Belonging in Nepal. Gallaudet University Press.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2013). (Don’t) Write My Lips: Interpretations of the Relationship between German Sign Language and German across Scales of SignWriting Practice. Signs and Society 1(2): 243-272.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2011). Ordering Burgers, Reordering Relations: Gestural interactions between hearing and d/Deaf Nepalis. Pragmatics 21(3): 373-391.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2011). Writing the Smile: Language ideologies in, and through, sign language scripts. Language and Communication 31(4): 435-355.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2011). Lending a Hand: Competence Through Cooperation in Nepal’s Deaf Associations. Language in Society 40(3): 385-306.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2010). Many Names for Mother: The Ethno-linguistic Politics of Deafness in Nepal. South Asia: The Journal of South Asian Studies 33(3): 421-441.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2008). Metasemiotic Regimentation in the Standardization of Nepali Sign Language. The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 18(2): 192-213

Professor Hoffmann-Dilloway was elected to the position of President-Elect for the Society for Linguistic Anthropology and assumed the role in November 2025. She will serve in that capacity through November 2027 and then serve as President for another two-year term.

Professor Hoffmann-Dilloway, together with Professor Angela Reyes from Hunter College, have been awarded funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for a workshop titled, “The Question of Nature in Linguistic Anthropology: Language Within and Beyond the Human.” The workshop will be held at Oberlin in Spring 2026.

Professor Hoffmann-Dilloway received a Fulbright Scholar Grant to conduct research in Nepal in 2022–23.

Professor Hoffmann-Dilloway’s book, Signing and Belonging in Nepal (Gallaudet University Press, 2016), was awarded an honorable mention for the 2017 Society for Linguistic Anthropology Edward Sapir Book Prize.

The Sapir Book Prize was established in 2001 and is awarded to a book that makes the most significant contribution to our understanding of language in society, or the ways in which language mediates historical or contemporary sociocultural processes.