Dear Colleague:
Thank you for your interest in "Mesoamerica and the Southwest:
A New History for an Ancient Land," an NEH Summer Institute
for college and university teachers sponsored by the Community
College Humanities Association. This letter from the project
directors will set out the general scope and aims of our project;
appended to the letter you will find an application packet,
consisting of NEH's general "Application Information and
Instructions" and an Application Cover Sheet.
This project will be held on site for six weeks, from June 19
through August 3, 2004, based in Mexico City and in Santa Fe,
New Mexico and other locations in the Southwest. Institute sessions
will be conducted successively by thirteen internationally distinguished
scholars, both in seminar and field study format, and are designed
to
enable faculty participants to explore the exciting and rapidly
accumulating new collaborative scholarship on the intersections
of Mesoamerican and Southwestern studies. At the heart of this
new interdisciplinary scholarship is a fundamental restructuring
of this major area of American Studies, bringing together for
study under one roof the cultural histories of Mesoamerica and
of the Southwest, in pre-Columbian, colonial, and modern contexts.
Key scholars, many of whom are serving as our Institute faculty,
are breaking new ground in cross-border studies of the ancient
and on-going connections between the peoples of Mesoamerica
and the peoples of the Southwest in terms of religious belief
and ceremony, social. political and economic organization, and
major artistic traditions.
The Institute should afford an unparalleled opportunity for
academics to travel and learn together, visiting many of the
most important sites for the study of Mesoamerican and Southwestern
culture, and studying under the guidance of a group of distinguished
visiting scholars and writers.
Applicants should be
aware that this project will involve a good deal of travel and
field study. Institute scholars will conduct a series of on-site presentations in many of the most important
cultural and archaeological sites in Mesoamerica and the U.S.
Southwest. In Mexico these will include major museums in Mexico
City, the Basilica of Guadalupe, the pre-Columbian sites of
Teotihuacan, Tula, Malinalco and Tetzcotzingo, the pilgrimage
church at Chalma, and the colonial religious art collection
at Tepotzotlan. We then fly to northern Mexico for an overnight
trip to Casas Grandes, a pre-Columbian trading center newly
understood to be a crucial nexus between the Mesoamerican and
Puebloan worlds. In New Mexico, scholars will lead study visits
to the ancient ruins of Pecos, Abo and Quarai, to the current
pueblos of the Northern Rio Grande, and to major museums in
Santa Fe and Taos. The Institute will conclude with a six-day
field trip through the Four Corners region, including study
visits to Chaco Canyon, Dine College, Canyon de Chelly, Zuni,
El Morro, and Acoma.
The two of us who are directing the project -- George Scheper
and Laraine Fletcher -- and our project manager, David Berry,
Executive Director of the Community College Humanities Association,
have worked together directing similar travel/study NEH Institutes,
and we have also worked with most of our visiting scholars in
these previous projects. This is the seventh NEH Institute George
Scheper has directed or co-directed for the Community College
Humanities Association on topics related to New World cultural
encounters. George directs an interdisciplinary program in humanities
for adult learners at the Community College of Baltimore County-Essex,
and regularly teaches interdisciplinary courses for The Johns
Hopkins University School of Professional Studies; his research
and publications focus on studies in comparative religion. For
more than twenty years Laraine Fletcher (Anthropology, Adelphi
University) has been involved in archaeological fieldwork, including
analyzes of the settlement patterns of the pre-Columbian sites
of Coba and Calakmul in conjunction with the Centro de Investigaciones
Historicas y Sociales of the Universidad Autonoma de Campeche.
Recently she began a photo-ethnographic project to document
with photographs and oral histories changes in the lives of
Maya women living in the villages near Valladolid, Yucatan.
We've had great working relationships with our visiting scholars,
and with the excellent travel agent who will be handling our
logistics. We trust that the experience we've gained as a team,
along with the resources of CCHA, will translate into a fruitful,
collegial and stimulating experience for our participants. We
do realize that the commitment to a six-week on-site project
makes this a particularly demanding travel/study experience,
and that participants must be willing to be very flexible and
to go with the flow as group arrangements demand. A generous
spirit of collegiality and good will do go a long way toward
making a complex project such as this work successfully!
FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS, EXPENSES and STIPEND
Because "Mesoamerica and the Southwest" is being held
on-site in Mexico and the Southwest, with a series of field-study
visits, the grant monies usually allocated as stipends have
been pooled to cover participant travel and lodging expenses
within the Institute, all of which will be covered directly
by CCHA (these costs per participant are equal in value to the
current $3700 stipend for a six-week Institute). Participants
will receive all lodging, internal travel and site-visit costs
for scheduled activities during the Institute, and some pre-arranged
meals, as will be specified in the detailed Daily Schedule.
Participants are responsible for meal expenses other than when
pre-arranged, for personal expenses and for their own travel
arrangements to Mexico City by June 19 and for return from Albuquerque
after August 2 (NEH funds cannot cover individual travel to
and from the Institute). Participants may wish to make these
travel arrangements individually, but our travel agent will
be pleased to assist participants with those arrangements.
Based on our past experience, participants should anticipate
budgeting between $30 to $40 per day for meals and other personal
expenses for the duration of the project.
STRUCTURE AND CONTENT
The Institute will run for six weeks, from June 19 through August
3, 2004. We will be based in Mexico City from June 19 through
July 7, and then in El Paso, Texas and Casas Grandes, Mexico
from July 8 through July 11. We transfer to Santa Fe, New Mexico
for two weeks, from July 12 through July 27, and conclude with
a six-day, five overnight study trip through the Four Corners
region July 29 through August 2. Sessions with Institute scholars
will generally alternate between seminars and field trips to
archaeological and cultural sites. Because of the intense schedule
of the "Mesoamerica and the Southwest" Institute,
as much of the required reading as possible should be done prior
to departure. There is a core reading list of about ten books
which accepted participants will need to acquire as soon as
possible, and in addition we will supply a set of Readers consisting
of duplicated additional selections assigned by the Institute
scholars for their respective sessions; these Readers will be
sent ahead to each selected participant upon our receipt of
her or his agreement to participate. To help ensure a high level
of informed discussion, this project will require of participants
quite a substantial amount of reading in a variety of disciplines.
So, once again, we'd like to stress how greatly it will contribute
to the success of the project if accepted participants undertake
as much of the required reading as can realistically be done
in advance.
A typical non-travel working day of the Institute will consist
of a seminar in the morning conducted by one of the visiting
scholars, followed by lunch and informal discussion with the
scholar. Once a week the project directors will conduct a brief
roundtable to review the proceedings and to discuss individual
ideas and needs. Days of field study either at archaeological
sites or contemporary cultural sites will typically devote the
full day to that activity. The visiting scholars will be available,
during their respective scheduled days with the Institute, for
consultation with participants about their individual research
and curricular interests.
INSTITUTE LOCATION AND FACILITIES
In Mexico, we will be based at the Hotel Majestic, located in
the historic center of Mexico City, adjoining the Templo Mayor,
the Cathedral and other colonial buildings, and with seminar
facilities at the hotel. Downtown Mexico City, especially since
the 1978 excavations of the Aztec Templo Mayor located next
to the Cathedral, is a spectacular laboratory for studying the
"double exposure" of indigenous and European cultures.
Now the Aztec and colonial Catholic worldviews can be comprehended
in a single purview, and the descriptions of the Aztec capital
of Tenochtitlan as given in such 16th century Spanish sources
as Cortes Bernal Diaz, and the Franciscan friar Bernardino de
Sahagun can be analyzed in relation to the actual visible layout
of the Templo Mayor and the artifacts in the adjoining museum,
along with relevant items in the Aztec collection in the main
Anthropology Museum. Scheduled field trips enable comparisons
with such other important earlier Mesoamerican urban centers
as Teotihuacan, Tula and Tetzcotzingo. For the more extended
field study of the pre-Columbian site of Paquime at Casas Grandes,
in Chihuahua, Mexico, we will be based in El Paso, with an overnight
at Casas Grandes. The second half of the project then moves
to New Mexico.
New Mexico displays incomparable multicultural layering, with
the propinquity of Anasazi ruins, living Pueblo communities
and over two centuries of colonial Spanish architecture and
artifacts. In New Mexico, the Institute will be housed (except
for the final six-day study trip) at conference facilities of
the College of Santa Fe, which also will provide our seminar
space and take care of all equipment needs for the Institute.
Participants will be granted library privileges at the college,
and access to computer facilities on campus. Santa Fe will be
our base for exploring the research facilities and study collections
of the Laboratory of Anthropology/ Museum of Indian Arts and
Culture, and the Indian Art Research Center of the School of
American Research, and the archival collections of the Palace
of the Governors, as well as for field trips to Pecos and the
Rio Grande pueblos. Our project concludes with a six-day field
study through the Four Corners region, a treasury of ancient
and contemporary Native American and Hispanic/Mexican cultural
history and heritage.
INSTITUTE FACULTY
In the course of the Institute seminars and field study will
be conducted by an array of distinguished visiting scholars
representing many different humanities disciplines. In Mexico
we will begin with a collaborative team of David Carrasco, an
authority on Mesoamerican religion, and Anthony Aveni, founder
of the field of Mesoamerican archaeoastronomy. In addition to
their individual seminars, Carrasco and Aveni will co-conduct
study trips to Teotihuacan and Tula. Our next scholar, Karl
Taube, is an anthropologist who has specialized in Mesoamerican
writing systems and the intersections of Mesoamerican and Southwestern
iconography; Taube will also escort visits to the Museum of
Anthropology and to the seldom visited Texcocan site of Tetzcotzingo.
Louise Burkhart will move the study of Nahua culture into the
contact era, with seminars on Nahua Christian drama and the
cult of Guadalupe, and she will escort study visits to the Basilica
of Guadalupe and to the pilgrimage church of Chalma. Our final
scholar in Mexico City is timothy Knab, an authority on dream-vision
and sorcery in traditional Nahua communities, and author of
A War of Witches: A Journey into the Underworld of the Contemporary
Aztecs.
Our Institute then flies to Juarez for a transfer to El Paso,
Texas, where F. Kent Reilly will offer a 'keynote'
lecture on the intersections of Mesoamerican and Southwestern
cosmovisions. No one has been more active in bringing together
the scholarship on the Mesoamerican and the Southwestern (and
Mississippian) cultures than Professor Reilly. We will also
be joined in El Paso by the husband and wife team of Curtis
and Polly Schaafsma. Polly, the recognized authority on Southwestern
rock art, will conduct a field study of the petroglyphs at Hueco
Tanks, Texas. Then Curtis and Polly will accompany us back across
the border on an overnight field study at Casas Grandes in Chihuahua,
Mexico. Curtis is co-editor with Carroll Riley of The Casas
Grandes World, a groundbreaking work central to the theme
of our Institute.
After our return to El Paso, we travel overland to Santa Fe,
where our first scholar will be J. J. Brody , who will
conduct two seminar on ancient pottery and mural painting of
the Southwest, and who will also conduct presentations of the
study collections of pottery and other indigenous and Spanish
colonial artifacts in Santa Fe. Professor Brody will also escort
our six-day trip through the Four Corners region at the conclusion
of the Institute. In Santa Fe we will also be joined by Fran
Levine, Director of the Palace of the Governors and authority
on Pecos Pueblo, who will conduct a day of study in at Pecos
and the Palace of the Governors.
Our next scholar in Santa Fe, Ramon Gutierrez, will conduct
two days of seminar on early Puebloan culture on the eve of
the Spanish incursion and the dynamics of the Pueblo/Spanish
cultural interaction. Gutierrez is author of the seminal monograph
When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away/ Marriage, Sexuality,
and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 and co-editor of Feasts
and Celebrations in American Ethnic Communities. We will
then move into literary study of two important encounter-era
texts with Rolena Adorno , who will lead discussion on the narrative
of Cabeza de Vaca and on Villagra's Historia de Nueva Mexico
(1610). Adorno is co-author of the monumental three-volume work
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His Life, and the
Expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez. Rina Swentzell, a member
of Santa Clara Pueblo, will offer a seminar on Puebloan cosmovision
as reflected in the architectural design of traditional Pueblo
communities, and will also escort a day trip to the upper Rio
Grande Pueblos, including Taos and Santa Clara.
Our final seminars will be offered by Amalia
Mesa-Bains, Director of the Institute for Visual and Public
Art at the California State University Monterrey Bay, on the
topic of the Chicano movement and on Chicano/a art reflecting
the symbolism of Aztlan.
Mesa-Bains is an independent artist and cultural
critic whose creative work has focused on interpretations of
traditional Chicano altars.
The Institute concludes with the six-day study trip through
the four corners region escorted by J. J. Brody, including visits
to archaeological sites and contemporary Native American communities.
During this trip, we will have meals and hosted presentations
by community leaders at Zia, Acoma and Zuni Pueblos, including
a presentation of the murals of Zuni Church by the artist Alex
Seotewa. Harry Walters will give a lecture on Dine (Navajo)
cosmovision at the Dine College.
APPLICATION
The Institute is intended to function as a stimulus to individual
study and research and as a seed-bed for course and curriculum
development. In your application essay you should identify an
area of personal research interest and/or of curriculum development
that you intend to pursue during the course of the Institute.
The semester following the Institute, participants will be asked
to submit areport on the impact of the Institute on their research
and teaching for the project director's Final Report to NEH.
For the reasons indicated above, you should note that perhaps
the most important part of your application is the essay that
must be submitted as part of the complete application. This
essay should include any personal and academic information that
is relevant; reasons for applying to this particular Institute;
your interest, both intellectual and personal, in the topic;
qualifications to do the work of the project and to make a contribution
to it; what you hope to accomplish by participation, including
any individual research and writing projects; and the relation
of the study to your teaching.
Please follow the guidelines in the enclosed
general "Application Information and Instructions"
from NEH, and remember that your completed application, in
hard copy only please, should be postmarked no
later than March 1, 2004, and should be addressed to our project
manager as follows:
