The Institute will provide participants with the opportunity to share with a community of scholars the most recent developments in the field of Andean Studies. The Institute will involve a full schedule of seminars, field study and travel. We are mindful of the demands on the participants of such an ambitious schedule and we have built into the program a number of optional field trips to allow individuals some option for rest, reflection and solitude, if they so choose. We are also very aware of the possible effects of Cusco’s altitude on particular individuals, and have designed our program to allow for the maximum time for acclimatization: we spend the first eleven days on the coast (Lima, Chiclayo and Trujillo) and then five days in Pisac in the Sacred Valley, the traditional place used by travelers to begin the acclimatization process before proceeding on to Cusco.

The design and scholarship of this Institute builds upon our prior experiences in directing six previous highly successful NEH Institutes, including projects held in Mexico, Guatemala and the Southwest, as well as our 2005 NEH summer institute “Andean Worlds: New Directions in Scholarship and Teaching.” We will again work with our very experienced Peruvian travel agent, who always confirms well in advance the availability and suitability of our seminar spaces and lodgings.

The Institute will run for four weeks, from June 29 through July 26, 2008, on-site in Peru.. The visiting scholars will conduct seminars as well as lead on-site study visits. A typical day will have a morning seminar held in the setting of a cultural or academic institution (for example, in Cusco at the Museo Inka of the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco; and in Pisac at the lodge and conference center in the sacred valley near Pisac operated by Millaturismo. The morning seminars are followed by lunch with the visiting scholar. In addition, we will hold informal weekly roundtables to continue discussions of the week’s topics as well as to air any other issues which participants might want to bring up. The afternoons are usually reserved for on-site study trips, which include visits to museums, city tours of historic districts, markets, archaeological sites and field demonstrations On-site visits are conducted by the visiting scholar and the project directors, and are usually accompanied by a local guide.

All participants will be sent binders with carefully selected reading materials, as well as a book list, prior to commencement of the Institute. While time is available for reading during the Institute, we suggest that as much reading as possible be done in advance. All seminar discussions and assigned readings are in English or English translation. While fluency in Spanish is obviously advantageous, it is not a requirement and lack of Spanish will not pose an obstacle to full participation in the program. [For Institute reading list, please click on Daily Schedule]

Our program balances seminars with site visits. As it has become an academic commonplace to reference the key role of “place” in the understanding of a culture, so too, our project recognizes the crucial component of “being there” and of the importance of bringing the participants directly to the sacred and secular centers of Andean civilizations. The Inka engaged in shaping the land as perhaps no other culture, sculpting bold creations, hewn from the living rock, in a manner that can best be appreciated by experiencing them in situ. The spectacular adaptations and innovative strategies employed by the Inka to overcome the extremes of their natural environment become amazingly evident standing in front of an Inka wall, experiencing the magnificence of the Coricancha temple, or viewing the archaeological remains of Wari, Moche or Chimor monumental structures. When the teacher can bring this first-hand encounter back to the classroom, for the students there is one less “degree of separation” from the material.

After initial seminars in Lima on the pre-Inkan cultures by Dr. Richard Burger, a foremost authority on Chavín and other early Andean cultures, followed by Dr. Jeffrey Quilter, a Peruvianist with expertise on Pre-ceramic period, we travel north for seminars with Dr. Cris Donnan, who worked closely with Dr. Walter Alva in the excavation of the royal tombs at Sipán Dr. Donnan, who has also worked for many years on the north coast, and has specialized in the Moche, will conduct three seminars . Included in our northern trip is a visit to Chan Chan, imperial capital city of the Chimor, the second largest native state in South America, as documented both by archaeological evidence and ethnohistorical accounts.

As we move south to Pisac, Michael Moseley, an Andean specialist, will be our scholar-guide, providing seminars and on-site study visits as we learn to “read” the walls and architectural complexities of the Inka at the archaeological sites of Pisac, Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu. Prof. Moseley continues with us to Cusco, to engage the group in the interpretation of the Inka sacred capital, including a study tour of the Coricancha (“Golden Courtyard”), the Inka Temple of the Sun and astronomical observatory. Moseley will point out the many ways in which the city, as well as other Inka and pre-Inka sites, function as cosmograms, intended to legitimize the ruling religious and political systems to their subjects.

These site-related field studies will be punctuated by seminars. Frank Salomon will present the latest scholarship concerning interpretations of the knotted string khipus as well as on interpreting the documentary sources on Inka myth. Sara Castro-Klaren will discuss new understandings of Inka social organization and statecraft. Regina Harrison will bring the study of Andean culture into colonial times and indeed into the present with seminars on Quechua oral performance.

Thus, while the major focus of the Institute will be on the Andean cultures prior to the arrival of the Spanish, with an emphasis on the Inka, we of course examine the period of the invasion/encounter and its aftermath, with Salomon specifically looking at the continuity, albeit transformed, of the khipus and Harrison examining change and continuity of Quechua culture and Castro-Klarén focusing on the early colonial period.. We also include seminars which look at those areas of Andean culture which exhibit continuity –-specifically in the areas of textile production. Nilda Callañaypa, an expert weaver and scholar, who has given presentations at Harvard, Cornell and Brown Universities and The Textile Museum in Washington, will give a seminar on Andean textile tradition.

Finally, guided curatorial visits to the key museums and monuments in Lima, Cusco, and other cities on our itinerary, with their significant research collections, are integrated into our ongoing seminar discussions and will form an important component in our attempt, during these five weeks, to create a new understanding of the Andean worlds.

This Institute will have an extremely broad appeal to professors in American studies, and Latin American studies, world history and American history, anthropology, art, comparative literature, comparative religion and, of course, to faculty with special interests in Native American studies and pre-Columbian studies. The project’s interdisciplinary approach will be an opportunity for every participant, no matter what her or his field, to broaden her base for teaching and research. Based on extensive past experience in administering similar Institutes, we confidently expect significant outcomes in scholarship and curriculum development, both in the creation of new courses and mainstreaming pre-Columbian and Andean course materials into existing courses in history, literature, art, humanities, and American Studies. We also anticipate widespread dissemination through academic networking, professional conference presentations, web sites, web logs, list serves and publications.
III. Daily Schedule.

For a detailed outline Daily Schedule, please click on “Daily Schedule”
IV. Institute Location and Facilities.

The Institute will be convened in Peru to emphasize locations suitable for the first-hand study of pre-Columbian and colonial Andean cultures and of continuities of Andean culture in contemporary times. All of our visiting scholars have emphasized how crucial they believe it is to have a first-hand encounter with the peoples, the geography and the artifacts of Andean cultures. Planning for the travel, lodging and seminar arrangements throughout the Institute have been closely orchestrated between the project directors, the project manager and our local travel agent in Peru, Carlos Milla, president of MillaTurismo, an agency very experienced in working with academic study groups in Peru and with excellent academic contacts throughout the country and with whom we worked during our 2005 "Andean Worlds" Institute. The project directors are familiar with all the facilities to be used during the Institute. The group will have safe, quiet lodgings throughout the project. Seminar facilities at our hotel in Lima, and at the Museo Inka of the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco in Cusco, at the Sican Museum in Ferrañafe and at other cultural institutions included in our Institute itinerary are fully equipped to handle our institute needs.

In addition, to our seminar sessions, a major component of our project consists of field study, as we make study visits to archaeological sites, museum collections and indigenous communities guided by our visiting and local scholars, all of whom have paramount professional experience and connections in the field in Peru: Richard Burger and Jeffrey Quilter for the pre-Inka collections in Lima; Christopher Donnan for the north coast sites; and Michael Moseley at Cusco, Pisac, Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu and Susan de France at the village of Amaru. Guided study visits to such sites in the company of scholars who are among the foremost authorities associated with their excavation and study will be, quite simply, the professional, intellectual and cultural experience of a lifetime, as participants from our 2005 "Andean Worlds" project have amply testified.

As centers for our more extended stays, Lima and especially Cusco, are unparalleled resources for understanding Andean history --Cusco, in particular, because it is a modern city, with a thriving community life, filled with Spanish colonial monuments and institutions built literally on top of existing Inka walls – perhaps nowhere more dramatically than at the monastery church of Santo Domingo built over the extensive surviving compound of the Inka temple of the sun, the Coricancha. The city of Cusco has many cultural institutions with comprehensive collections of pre-Columbian and colonial art, including magnificent collections of the first distinct school of art of the post-contact Americas, the Cusqueño School of painting.