FACULTY AND STAFF

Stephanie Wood, author of four books, dozens of articles on Mesoamerica, and a co-editor of the Handbook of Latin American Studies' "Mesoamerican Ethnohistory" series since 1995, is directing the Mesoamerican content portion of the institute. She is a specialist in pictorial and textual manuscripts produced in indigenous communities of New Spain. She and Musick collaborate at the University of Oregon on the Mapas Project, which has benefited from a two-year NEH grant, 2006–08. This is a digital resource that will feature prominently in the institute, along with the Virtual Mesoamerican Archive (VMA), a finding aid and repository for Mesoamerican heritage materials at Oregon and around the globe. Building the VMA over the past half-dozen years has helped Wood keep abreast of the latest developments in all aspects of Mesoamerican cultures and histories. Curriculum Vitae

Judith Musick, Director of the Wired Humanities Project at the University of Oregon and an early member of the international movement to establish the new "inter-discipline" of digital humanities, will direct the technology component of this institute. She is assembling a team of experts who will share their skills in working with still images, slide presentations, and simple video editing, all with an eye to enhancing curriculum development. She will also explore with us, more generally, the ways in which digital humanities methods can present unique approaches to cultural heritage materials for scholars and teachers. Curriculum Vitae

Robert Haskett, Professor of History, University of Oregon, shares with Wood an expertise in ethnohistory and co-edits the Handbook of Latin American Studies' "Mesoamerican Ethnohistory" series. Professor Haskett brings to the institute his special familiarity with religion, pre- and post-conquest. Curriculum Vitae

Ron Lancaster, Instructor of Teacher Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon, will work with us as a master teacher and will facilitate discussions on curricular applications of the institute content. Curriculum Vitae

Sandra Noble, Director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI), Dr. Noble, a specialist in Classic Maya art history, with experience deconstructing the artistic, epigraphic, and contextual elements in different kinds of sculpture, and who also has extensive knowledge of cutting-edge Mesoamerican research, especially archaeological work funded by FAMSI, will treat us to an update on Mayan studies and possible curricular directions for high school students, as well as the latest thinking on the so-called Maya "collapse," debated in recent years. Curriculum Vitae

Lynn Stephen, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oregon, with twenty-five years visiting and studying what is now Oaxaca, Mexico, will introduce us to the Mixtecs and Zapotecs and discuss important social, political, economic, and religious aspects of their societies. Curriculum Vitae

Carolyn Tate, Professor of Art History, Texas Tech University, will explain sculpture from three major culture groups in Mesoamerica, suggest interpretive paths, and explore the importance of context for determining meaning. She will also take us deeper into the Olmec sculptures from La Venta and outline her new theory, that these figures are signifiers of creation and human origins. Curriculum Vitae

Marc Zender, Lecturer on Anthropology at Harvard University, and Research Associate of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions of the Peabody Museum of Anthropology & Ethnology, is a renowned expert on ancient Maya writing and language. He will share with us the significance of the emergence of writing systems in Mesoamerica and will help us to contextualize the glyphic texts we will be studying on monuments, ceramic vessels and codices (ancient books). Zender has also published extensively on the Mesoamerican ballgame, and he will convey some new findings on this sport with us. Curriculum Vitae

John Sullivan and Delfina de la Cruz from Zacatecas, Mexico will lead the final workshop on indigenous perspectives on Mesoamerican studies. Sra. de la Cruz is a native speaker and teacher of Nahuatl at the the Zacatecas Institute for Teaching and Research in Ethnology (IDIEZ). She and John Sullivan, the director, will discuss how students at IDIEZ are reacquainting themselves with texts and other items that have, over the centuries, become alienated from the descendants of the pre-Columbian peoples in Mexico. Sullivan and De la Cruz will share the latest results of this unique, collaborative (indigenous/nonindigenous) endeavor with our participants, preparing us with a new way of thinking about the materials under study. Curriculum Vitae, IDIEZ website.

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