Community College Humanities Association
Introductory Letter | Financial Arrangements | Structure
and Content | Institute Location and Facilities | Institute Faculty
| Application Preface |
APPLICATION INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS
c/o Essex County College * 303 University Avenue * Newark, NJ 07102-1798
October
12, 2001
Thank
you for your interest in the "The Maya World: Cultural Continuities and Change
in Guatemala, Chiapas and Yucatán," 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 23 through August 3,
2002. Institute sessions, led by eighteen internationally distinguished
scholars, will be based in Antigua, Guatemala, and in San Cristóbal,
Palenque and Mérida in Mexico, with field trips to ancient Maya sites at
Copán (Honduras), Quiriguá, Iximché, Toniná,
Bonampak, Yaxchilán, Uxmal, Chichen Itzá, Balankanché and
Ek Balam. We will also visit contemporary Maya communities in Tecpán,
San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Santiago Atitlán, Chamula and
Zinacantán. The “Maya World” Institute will afford an
unparallelled opportunity for academics to travel and learn together, visiting
so many of the most important sites for the study of Maya culture, and studying
under the guidance of a group of distinguished visiting scholars and writers.
The
two of us 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 a similar Maya World
Institute in the summer of 2000. This is the sixth NEH Institute George Scheper
has directed or co-directed for the Community College Humanities Association on
topics related to the New World cultural encounters. George directs an
interdisciplinary program in humanities for
Introductory Letter | Financial Arrangements | Structure
and Content | Institute Location and Facilities | Institute Faculty
| Application Preface |
APPLICATION
INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS
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 analyzing the settlement patterns of the
Classic Maya cities of Cobá and Calakmul. This work was conducted in conjunction with the Centro de
Investigaciones Históricas y Sociales of the Universidad Autónoma
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.
We’ve
had a great experience working together with our visiting scholars, and with
the wonderful Guatemalan and Mexican travel agencies who will be handling our
travel arrangments. 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 know that the on-site
commitment 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!
Introductory Letter | Financial Arrangements | Structure
and Content | Institute Location and Facilities | Institute Faculty
| Application Preface |
APPLICATION
INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS
FINANCIAL
ARRANGEMENTS, EXPENSES and STIPEND
The
first thing we should stress about this six-week project is that because it is
being held on-site in Guatemala and Mexico, with a series of field-study
visits, the grant monies usually allocated as stipends have been pooled to
cover participant travel and lodging expenses, all of which will be covered
directly by the Institute. Participants will receive roundtrip transportation
to and from the Institute, all lodging, local travel and site-visit costs for
scheduled activities during the Institute, a set of institute Readers, and a
few pre-arranged meals.
Until
participants are selected and the individual travel arrangments have been made,
we cannot be sure whether there will be monies available for participant cash
stipends. Based on our previous on-site projects, we do anticipate that a small
cash stipend may be possible, which would help defray meal costs and your other
Institute expenses, including purchase of requisite textbooks. In the meantime,
selected participants should anticipate budgeting between $30 to $50 per day
for meals and other personal expenses for the duration of the project.
Introductory Letter | Financial Arrangements | Structure
and Content | Institute Location and Facilities | Institute Faculty
| Application Preface |
APPLICATION
INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS
STRUCTURE AND CONTENT
The
Institute will run for six weeks, from June 23 through August 3, based
primarily in Antigua, San Cristóbal, Palenque, and Mérida, with additional field
study in a variety of ancient and contemporary sites of Maya culture in
Guatemala, Honduras, Chiapas and Yucatán. Sessions with Institute
scholars will generally alternate between seminars and field trips to archaeological and
cultural sites. Because of the intense schedule of the “Maya World”
Institute, as much of the required reading as possible should be done prior to
departure. There will be a core reading list of about a dozen 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
project ideas. 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.
Introductory Letter | Financial Arrangements | Structure
and Content | Institute Location and Facilities | Institute Faculty
| Application Preface |
APPLICATION
INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS
INSTITUTE LOCATION AND
FACILITIES
Our
Institute focuses on the ancient, the colonial and the contemporary Maya, in
some of the most important and distinctive regions of Maya culture. It is
fundamental to the design of the project, especially for the components that
involve archaeology, art and ethnography, that our classroom seminar sessions
be held in close conjunction with on-site field experiences
The
first unit of the Institute is based in Antigua, the former colonial capital of
Guatemala, and today a major tourist destination and a center for international
study. Lodging and seminar space is at the Hotel Las Farolas, in a quiet
neighborhood near the main plaza. Participants will also have access to the
nearby facilities of CIRMA (Centro de Investigaciones de Mesoamerica), the most
important study center in the region, with a major library and an unparallelled
photo-archive. Phone and fax services are available at the hotel and convenient
and very reasonably priced e-mail facilities are available within a block or
two. Antigua is a convenient base for our overnight field trips to
Copán, Chichicastenango, Santiago Atitlán and Guatemala City.
We
leave Antigua for an overland trip to colonial San Cristóbal, Chiapas,
where we will be based at the legendary hostelry and study center of Na Bolom.
In San Cristóbal we will meet with Maya theatre groups, and the city
will be our base for field trips to the towns of Chamula and Zinacantán.
The second half of our stay in Chiapas will be based in Palenque, where we will
stay at the Hotel Tulipanes, just across the street from the local headquarters
of PARI (Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute). Currently PARI is co-sponsoring
with INAH (the Mexican national agency that oversees archaeological projects) a
major excavation and mapping project at the Group of the Cross at Palenque, and
we will have a chance to see some of the current very important archaological
work being done. During our stay in Palenque we will also have the opportunity
to take the exciting field trip to Bonampak and, by river, to Yaxchilan.
Introductory Letter | Financial Arrangements | Structure
and Content | Institute Location and Facilities | Institute Faculty
| Application Preface |
APPLICATION
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The final unit of the
Institute is based in the colonial capital of Mérida, Yucatán,
with lodgings at Hotel Casa de Balam, and seminar facilities at the nearby
Universidad Autonóma de Yucatán. Mérida gives convenient
access to our fieldtrips to Uxmal and other Puuc Maya sites, to Chichen
Itzá and Ek Balam, and to such important colonial sites as Izamná
and the parish churches of Ticul and
Mani, as well as historic henequen haciendas.
Introductory Letter | Financial Arrangements | Structure
and Content | Institute Location and Facilities | Institute Faculty
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APPLICATION
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The
eighteen distinguished scholars from the U.S., Canada and Mexico who will be
presenting at the Institute are uniquely qualified to address the subject of
Maya studies and colonial studies in Guatemala and Mexico. All are in the
forefront of their respective fields as researchers; their field work, papers
and publications are at the heart of current scholarly enterprise and academic
dialogue, and all are distinguished teachers as well, with unusual ability to
communicate the substance of their expertise and to generate enthusiasm on the
part of non-specialists -- and we have found them a joy to work with.
George
Lovell (Geography, Queen's University, Canada), is a specialist in Guatemalan
social history in the colonial period; he’s also written eloquently (A
Beauty that Hurts) about the contemporary situation in Guatemala. George
will conduct two days of seminar on colonial and modern Guatemalan history.
Victor Montejo (Native
American Studies, University of California, Davis), author of Testimony, will conduct two days of seminar in
Antigua on the subject of testimonial literature and on Maya storytelling, with
a focus on his own experiences and contributions as a Maya writer. Other Maya
writers who will give discussions and readings will be Gaspar Pedro
González, the first Maya novelist (A Mayan Life and Return of
the Maya), and poet Maya R. Cu. These writers will be happy to share their
experiences informally in social gatherings as well as in the seminar room.
Michael
Coe (emeritus, Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology, and Curator of
Anthropology in the Peabody Museum, at Yale University), the “dean of
Maya studies,” will conduct
three, we know, unforgetable days of field study at Quiriguá and
Copán. Mike has an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Maya studies
(Breaking the Maya Code) and is an endless fount of information and
anecdote.
Carol
Hendrickson (Anthropology, Marlboro College), author of Weaving Identities,
will conduct five days of seminar and field study in
Introductory Letter | Financial Arrangements | Structure
and Content | Institute Location and Facilities | Institute Faculty
| Application Preface |
APPLICATION
INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS
Guatemala stressing
the politics and economics of textile production. During her time with us,
Carol will introduce us to Maya friends and colleagues in the
communities where she
has done fieldwork. Similarly, in two days spent with Vincent Stanzione, we
will be introduced to the religious and cultural traditions of the Maya
community of Santiago Atitlán; Vinnie, author of Rituals of Sacrifice,
has long resided in the Atiteco community.
In
Guatemala City, we will be guided to that city’s museums by local
historian and former ambassador of Guatemala to the United States Federico
Fahsen. When the project moves to San Cristóbal, our guides to local
culture and history in Chiapas will be Gary Gossen (chair of Anthropology at
SUNY Albany), who has published widely on the traditional festivals of the town
of Chamula; Robert Laughlin (Curator of Anthropology at the Smithsonian), who
has collected the oral traditions of Zinacantán, and who, with his wife
Miriam, is sponsor of local Maya theatre groups; and Jan de Vos, historian of
Chiapas and a scholar intimately familiar with the history of the Zapatista
movement.
We shift back to the archaeological mode when our project moves to Palenque, where INAH archaeologist Alfonso Morales and Julia Miller, who are conducting current archaeological work at Palenque, will be our “insider” guides to the exciting work being done at this most important classic Maya site, and will also be our guides to field trips to Yaxchilán and Bonampak. Similarly, INAH archaeologist Rebecca González Lauck, an authority on the Olmec, will conduct a study visit to Parque La Venta in Villahermosa, en route to Yucatán.
In
Yucatán, our seminar days in Mérida will be led by Victoria
Bricker (Anthropolgy, Tulane), author of the influential work, The Indian
Christ, the Indian King, who will discuss the contact and colonial periods;
Francisco Fernández (Chair, Facultad de Ciencias Antropológicas,
Universidad Autónomo de Yucatán), who will offer a seminar on the
period of the Caste War in the Yucatán; and Piedad Peniche Rivero
(Director, Archivo General de Estado de Yucatán), who will offer
seminars on Yucatec social and economic
Introductory Letter | Financial Arrangements | Structure
and Content | Institute Location and Facilities | Institute Faculty
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APPLICATION
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history in the modern
period, and lead a field trip to historic henequen haciendas.
Study of the extremely
rich and complex archaeological history of Yucatán will be conducted jointly
by Jeff Kowalski (Art History, Northwestern University) and Rafael
“Rach” Cobos (Facultad de Ciencias Antropológicas,
Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán), both of whom have extensive
field experience in Yucatán; together they will co-conduct five days of
seminar and field study of Yucatec Maya sites. This will bring our six-week
project to a happily exhausted conclusion, as we all head home to digest and
assimilate the proceedings, develop our slides and photos, and gear up to use
the material in our upcoming Fall classes, and to present at upcoming
conferences.
Introductory Letter | Financial Arrangements | Structure
and Content | Institute Location and Facilities | Institute Faculty
| Application Preface |
APPLICATION
INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS
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. In the final week
the project directors will conduct a roundtable at which curricular
implications of the Institute will be discussed and preliminary individual
and/or team project reports presented. By May 1, 2003, participants will be
asked to submit a final statement on the impact of the Institute on their
research and teaching for the project directors’ 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
reasearch 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 should be postmarked
no later than March 1, 2002, and should be addressed to our project manager as
follows:
David
A. Berry, Maya World Project Manager
Community
College Humanities Association
c/o
Essex County College
303
University Avenue
Newark,
NJ 07102-1798
email:dberry@earthlink.net
tel:
973-877-3577
We wish you all the
best and look forward to hearing from you. If you have additional questions
about the structure or content of our Institute, please contact David Berry, above,
or one of us at either of the addresses below.
Sincerely,
|
Dr. George L. Scheper Maya World Project Director Professor of Humanities CCBC—Essex Baltimore County, MD 21237 email: shepbklyn@aol.com tel: 410-780-6539 |
Dr. Laraine Fletcher Anthropology Adelphi University Garden City, LI, NY 11530-4299 email: fletcher@adelphi.edu tel:
516-877-4114 |