“Mesoamerican Cultures and their Histories:
Spotlight on Oaxaca!”
July 4 to 29, 2011
Oaxaca, Mexico
Backstreets of Oaxaca, pastel by Pearl Lau, NEH Participant, 2010
- We have had 190 applications for 2011; we are admitting 30, including 27 teachers and 3 graduate students, who will comprise our NEH “Summer Scholars”!
- We are currently gathering the acceptance forms from the 30 NEH Summer Scholars.
- This is now also the time for our NEH Summer Scholars to be getting their air tickets and arranging for their lodging (expenses that must come out of their stipends).
- Stipends will amount to a total of $3,300.
- We will have a welcome reception on the evening of July 3, 2011. The farewell party will be on Friday night, July 29th. Departures from Oaxaca may begin taking place on July 30th.
- Thanks to funding from the NEH, this Summer Institute for School Teachers (K-12) will take place in Oaxaca, Mexico, from July 4 to 29, 2011. (The dates on the brochure published by NEH are incorrect; they preserved last year’s dates by mistake.)
- This is a great fellowship opportunity for teachers across the U.S. who wish to increase Mesoamerican content in their courses, delve into indigenous cultures and their histories from readings, lectures, and experiential learning through excursions in southern Mexico.
- You may be interested to read comments from participants in the summer institute of 2010.
- Spanish-language ability is not a requirement for applying to this Institute.
- How will we make our selections? We like diversity. Our group of participants for Summer 2010 was quite diverse. We had eleven teachers who teach grades up through 8; one who ranged from K to 12; and 17 who taught 9th grade through 12th. We had three graduate students (something new and encouraged by NEH), two of whom were teaching. We had six coming to Oaxaca from jobs in California, four from Illinois, three from New York, two from Georgia, two from Idaho, one each from Connecticut, Indiana, North Carolina, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Most NEH Summer Scholars were teaching Social Studies, Spanish, ESL/ESOL, Art, and Language Arts/Literature. We had one Biology teacher — who particularly connected with our unit on ethnobotany!
- Wish to write a strong application essay? Take a look first at our detailed plans for Oaxaca for 2011, please read our Dear Colleague Letter and then see our Syllabus and Calendar. Tell us how you would connect with specific themes we are addressing in the Institute. For the password to required readings, please write Stephanie Wood [swood AT uoregon DOT edu].
- As you anticipate a visit to Oaxaca, check out this wonderful arts calendar, El Jolgorio.
- See a streaming interview with the institute director, Stephanie Wood, speaking about the indigenous-language dictionary she is building with colleagues in Zacatecas, Mexico.
- RSS feed: You may sign up for an RSS feed (look on the left side bar of this page for the link), which will send you an email about changes to this web page. This is where we will point to anything that is new on the site. There is a feed for Entries and Comments.
We invite you to visit this website frequently as we will be adding content regularly. The website will be the primary means for notifying you of our application deadlines, the content of the institute, ideas about housing, and the host of other details that will accompany our adventure in Oaxaca.
After the finalists have been chosen and accepted, we will begin building a who’s who page for all who are willing to share short bios and photos, so we can get to know one another as soon as possible. We will also form a listserv where you can begin to communicate with the community of scholars with whom you will be sharing four weeks in Oaxaca!
Please feel free to share this announcement with others by using this poster.
To contact us now, please email: Stephanie Wood [swood AT uoregon DOT edu].
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.