Who We Are

Board Members

History

Staff Directory

    
          SAR Home

SAR Staff Scholars and
Resident Research Associates

Rebecca A. Allahyari Research Associate Rebecca A. Allahyari is a qualitative sociologist interested in emotions, gender, and religion in everyday practice and politics. Her current ethnographic project, “Utopian Devotions: Enchantment and Anxiety in Homeschooling,” explores homeschooling as an on-the-ground, experimental practice interwoven with urgent visions of sacred childhoods and the constraints of mundane life. She has presented this work at the International Association for the History of Religions 19th World Congress in Tokyo, as well as before sociologists and anthropologists of religion in the US. She will participate in the joint SAR/SSRC 2008 symposium in New York on the theme “Religious, Spiritual, Secular: Invidious Distinctions and Ambivalent Attachments.” In her earlier work, Visions of Charity: Volunteer Workers and Moral Community (University of California Press, 2000), she considered the competing emotions and moralities wrapped up in the self-work of feeding the poor at a Catholic Worker and a Salvation Army kitchen in the early 1990s, a time of compassion fatigue and welfare reform.

James F. Brooks President James F. Brooks published a comparative-historical essay, “Bondage and Emancipation Across Cultural Borderlands,” in the volume Orientalism and Empire in Russia: Kritika Historical Studies 3. With Chris DeCorse and John Walton, he co-edited Small Worlds: Method, Meaning and Narrative in Microhistory (SAR Press). He contributed an essay “Captive, Concubine, Servant, Kin: A Historian Divines Experience in Archaeological Slaveries” to the volume Captives in Prehistory: Agents of Social Change, edited by Catherine Cameron and forthcoming from the University of Utah Press. Brooks served as discussant for a session on “Indian-Hispanic Community Formation” at the American Society for Ethnohistory meetings in Tulsa Oklahoma, and will offer the keynote lecture for a conference at the British Museum on “Captivity, Adoption, and Slavery in Colonial America.” He will also offer keynotes at a symposium on “Ancient Borderlands” at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at the New Mexico Statewide Preservation Conference in Taos, NM, as well as speak at a conference on “Landscapes of Violence: Conflict and Trauma through Time” at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Brooks continues work on his book Mesa of Sorrows: Archaeology, Prophecy, and the Ghosts of Awat’ovi Pueblo.

Catherine Cocks SAR Press co-director and executive editor Catherine Cocks is currently researching the early twentieth-century tourist industry for a study titled “Tropical Whites: Hot-Weather Tourism and the Modern Self, 1880–1940.” In addition to visiting the Latin American collections at the University of Texas, Austin, she conducted research at the Seaver Center for Western History, UCLA, and USC during 2007. In April, she participated in the second meeting of the symposium “Bridging National Borders in North America,” which was co-sponsored by Simon Fraser University and the Clements Center for the Study of the Southwest at Southern Methodist University. The proceedings are in review with Duke University Press. She also presented work at a seminar on the life and work of Maria Martinez at SAR’s Indian Arts Research Center and commented on a panel on tourism at the Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies conference. A member of the board of the Institute for the Transnational History of the Americas, she chaired the program committee for the 2007 meeting in Tepoztlán, Morelos.

Linda S. Cordell Senior Scholar Linda S. Cordell published an article “Mesa Verde Settlement History and Relocation: Climate Change, Social Networks, and Ancestral Pueblo Migration” co-authored with Carla Van West, Jeffrey S. Dean, and Deborah Muenchrath in The Kiva, Vol. 72(4): 379–406. She lectured in the Southwest Seminar Series in Santa Fe and at Yale University’s Department of Anthropology, and gave the Bandelier Lecture at the Archaeological Society of New Mexico’s annual meeting. She chaired an external review committee for the Anthropology Department at National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution), and has been appointed to the Visiting Committee of the R. S. Peabody Museum at Phillips Academy, Andover MA. On Nov. 3rd, she served as moderator for the symposium, “Liquid Assets: Using Water in the Arid Southwest,” jointly sponsored by SAR and the Friends of Archaeology of the Museum of New Mexico. “It has been my pleasure to serve as SAR’s representative to the Galisteo Basin Archaeological Coordinating Committee,” Cordell said. “The committee worked hard to secure funding from the State of New Mexico to begin archaeological assessment of 24 nationally significant sites in the Galisteo Basin and was rewarded when Governor Richardson signed the provision for funds passed by the New Mexico Legislature. Arroyo Hondo Pueblo, long a focus of SAR research, is one of the 24 sites included in the archeological district.”

George J. Gumerman Senior Scholar George J. Gumerman has been a leader in major theoretical advances in his field since the 1960s. He is at the forefront of using computer modeling to simulate the cultural evolution of the prehistoric Southwest. During his term as Resident Scholar at the School in 1979, Dr. Gumerman wrote The Changing Face of Archaeology: A View from Black Mesa, published by the University of Arizona Press in 1984. Dr. Gumerman chaired a number of SAR Advanced Seminars that resulted in the publication of Dynamics of Southwest Prehistory, Themes in Southwest Prehistory, and Understanding Complexity in the Prehistoric Southwest. He also edited the influential volume, The Anasazi in a Changing Environment (Cambridge University Press, 1988), an outline of a 1,000-year chronicle of environmental and cultural history that attempts to explain broad patterns of interactions between humans and their environment. In 2007, Gumerman presented a paper at the Society for American Archaeology in Austin, co-authored with Steve Lekson in the session honoring SAR Senior Scholar Linda Cordell. A five-day workshop at the Santa Fe Institute was hosted by Gumerman and Tim Pauketat of the University of Illinois on “Cosmology and the Prehistoric Amerindian World,” focusing on the American Southeast, Southwest, Mesoamerican, and Andean civilizations. Gumerman, along with J. Dean, J. Epstein, Alan Swedlund, and Rob Axtell, also published “Generating Societies: The 1050 Project and the Artificial Anasazi Model” in Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent Based Computational Modeling, edited by J. Epstein (Princeton University Press).

John Kantner SAR Vice President John Kantner is an anthropological archaeologist with experiences range from Spanish Colonial historic sites in New Mexico and Georgia, to pre-Hispanic traditions of southern Central America, to early nomadic sites of the Southern Plains. With a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Kantner currently directs the Lobo Mesa Archaeological Project (LMAP) in west-central New Mexico. The goal of this research is to identify the processes by which complex social and political regional institutions emerge from communities of comparatively simple horticulturists. This project also seeks to understand the Chaco Canyon phenomenon and its impact on the prehistory of the American Southwest, an interest explored in his most recent book, The Ancient Puebloan Southwest, published by Cambridge University Press, and a 2000 book, Great House Communities Across the Chacoan Landscape, published by University of Arizona Press. In 2006–2007, Kantner published a chapter on post-Chacoan religion in the edited volume Religion in the Prehispanic Southwest and a book review in American Antiquity, and an invited article evaluating the state of regional analysis in archaeology is currently in press with the Journal of Archaeological Research. With colleagues Kevin Vaughn and Jelmer Eerkens, Kantner co-chaired a SAR Advanced Seminar on “The Emergence of Leadership,” the results of which are being prepared for possible publication by SAR Press. In May, he completed a six-year appointment as editor of the Society for American Archaeology’s trade journal, The Archaeological Record, receiving a SAA Presidential Recognition Award for his efforts.

Cynthia Chavez Lamar Cynthia Chavez Lamar joined SAR as the Indian Arts Research Center Director in August 2007. Chavez Lamar has an art background in clay sculpting, printmaking, and photography and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. She previously worked at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, where she curated the Native community components of the inaugural exhibition “Our Lives: Contemporary Lives and Identities.” Chavez Lamar also served as museum director at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, NM. Since joining SAR, Chavez Lamar began work on a project sponsored by the Anne Ray Charitable Trust in fall 2007 by facilitating a planning seminar on Native women’s art production and the social and cultural issues surrounding their roles. This ongoing project will bring the participating women artists back to SAR in February 2008, when they will present their works in process. Another seminar planned for 2008 is on emerging Native artists working in a variety of media. This gathering will bring together artists, scholars, and writers to begin a dialogue on the future of contemporary Native arts from the perspective of this new generation of artists. As part of IARC’s outreach efforts to local Native communities, SAR will host a museum conservation symposium on January 31, 2008 for tribal museum and cultural center professionals as well as students interested in conservation careers. Other outreach efforts include the travel of the Chief White Antelope blanket to Chickasha, Oklahoma at the request of the Sand Creek Massacre Descendents Trust.

Nancy Owen Lewis Director of Scholar Programs Nancy Owen Lewis received her PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Massachusetts and subsequently taught anthropology at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and the University of Arkansas. In 1994, she received the Outstanding Leadership in Health Promotion Award from the New Mexico Department of Health. Two years later she was awarded a Robert O. Anderson Fellowship from The Lovelace Institutes, which enabled her to publish the first known study of drive-up liquor windows. She continues to pursue research on drunk driving and currently serves on the City of Santa Fe Public Safety Committee. In collaboration with Cathleen Willging, she will co-chair a seminar in June 2008 on “Policy under the Influence: Addressing Substance Abuse in New Mexico.” Her recent publications and papers include A Peculiar Alchemy: A Centennial History of SAR, co-authored with Kay Hagan (SAR Press, 2007); “Our Lady of Light: The Loretto Chapel,” Public Historian, Vol. 29 (4), Fall 2007; and “Preserving a Culture, Promoting a Town: Hewett’s Appropriation of the Santa Fe Fiesta,” National Council on Public History meeting, April 2007. In 2007, she received funding from the New Mexico Office of the State Historian to pursue research on the impact of tuberculosis on the culture of New Mexico, from 1880–1940.

N. Scott Momaday Senior Scholar Scott Momaday reports that “I continue to work on the subject of human dignity, having chaired a symposium on indigenous cultures at UNESCO in which human dignity was a principal issue. The subject seems to grow in importance.” As Director of the Buffalo Trust in Oklahoma, Momaday began work on the building of an archive and campground at Rainy Mountain for the preservation of Kiowa and Comanche documents and the instruction of Indian youth in the traditions of their culture. He lectured weekly in the Honors College at the University of Oklahoma, gave the Phi Beta Kappa address there, and spoke at a language fair for high school students, representing numerous native languages. “I wrote the Oklahoma Centennial Poem and read it at Governor Brad Henery’s second inauguration. My children’s book, Four Arrows and Magpie, was published in celebration of the Centennial.” Momaday reviewed Hampton Sides’ Blood and Thunder for the New York Times Book Review and continued to work on an autobiographical narrative and a book of his photographs and paintings. In May, he gave the commencement address at St. John’s College.

Douglas W. Schwartz President emeritus and Senior scholar, Douglas Schwartz continues work on three major projects: synthesis of his twenty years of pioneering archaeological research on Grand Canyon prehistoric and historic culture history; continuing examination of the excavations, analysis, and publications he oversaw relating to the 1,000-room, fourteenth-century Arroyo Hondo pueblo south of Santa Fe; and research he has carried out for several years on the foundations of Charles Darwin’s creativity. Recently, he presented a review of his Canyon work to the Grand Canyon Historical Society, he was a keynote speaker on this topic for a program in honor of Irving Rouse at Yale University, and he presented a lecture in SAR’s public lecture series entitled “On the Edge of Splendor: A Reinvisioning of Grand Canyon Prehistory.” An article on his Arroyo Hondo research, “The Origins of the Great Pueblo,” was recently published in the Smithsonian Institutions’ publication AnthroNotes. During the coming year, he will be visiting Cuba, Moorish sites in Spain, Roman ruins in North Africa, and the island of Elba off the Tuscany coast of Italy. Doug continues to be a board member of the First National Bank of Santa Fe, the Witter-Bynner Foundation for Poetry, and an active squash player.