Ethnology/Linguistics Students:

 

 Please fill out the biography form so that we can add you to the list of current students in the department.

 

Jill Ahlberg
E-mail: jahlberg@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Suzanne Oakdale
Areas of interest: Navajo, personhood/self, ethnoaesthetics, exchange
Dissertation Topic: My fieldwork is based on exploring the social dimensions of weaving in contemporary Navajo life. I examine how learning to weave in various contexts contributes to moral and personal development in Navajo society.
Sean P. Bruna (home page)
Dissertation Committee: Les Field, Beverly Singer, Nina Wallerstein
Areas of Interest: Native North America, Decolonizing Methodologies, Type II Diabetes, Political Economy, Public Anthropology
Dissertation Topic: My research explores the beliefs and perceptions of type II diabetes prevention at a southwestern pueblo.
Awards: Smithsonian Visiting Student, CDC Division of Diabetes & Translation Internship, Robert Wood Johnson Center for Health Policy Fellow
Andrew Carey
E-mail: acarey1@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Marta Weigle
Areas of interest: folklore, tourism, legal anthropology, neo-colonialism
Dissertation Topic: UFO Folklore and Tourism
Shasta C. Gaughen
E-mail: sgaughen@msn.com
Homepage: www.unm.edu/~shasta/CV.htm
Dissertation Committee: Les Field
Areas of interest: Native Americans, identity, political economy, applied anthropology, cultural change, cultural revitalization, Indian gaming, California
Dissertation Topic: I am investigating the impact that a new casino is having on the people of the Pala Indian Reservation in San Diego County, California. Specifically, I am interested in the impact of casino profits on crafting and deploying different notions of identity, and how money is changing cultural systems on the reservation.
Chrissy Getrich
E-mail: cgetrich@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Louise Lamphere (Chair), Carole Nagengast, Les Field
Areas of interest: immigration, new immigrant communities in the U.S., U.S.-Mexico borderlands, human rights, health care and social service access
Julia Meredith Hess
E-mail: meredith@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Carole Nagengast (Chair), Sylvia Rodriguez, Les Field, Frank Korom (Boston University)
Areas of interest: transnationalism, diaspora, migration, immigration/refugee policy, human rights, the state, Tibet, Tibetan diaspora, Asia, North America
Dissertation Topic:

"Stateless Citizens: culture, nation and identity in the expanding Tibetan diaspora." My dissertation examines transformations in Tibetan identity as significant numbers of Tibetans resettle in the United States with immigrant visas. The dissertation examines Tibetan responses to state policy, as well as discourses about culture, nation, and citizenship that circulate among Tibetan exiles and how notions of belonging (to Tibet, to exile society and to one's host society) are changing at this critical historical juncture.

Shirley Heying
E-mail: saheying@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Les Field, Carole Nagengast, Suzanne Oakdale, Jane Ellen Smith
Areas of interest: Highland Guatemala cultural anthropology of the Maya Kaqchikel, indigenous identity, class systems, human rights and Guatemalan orphan experiences.
Dissertation Topic: Understanding the experiences of Guatemalan war orphans of La Violencia and the long-term effects of violence on their identities and lives in post-conflict Guatemala.

Conferences:

UNM Spring Symposium 2004 - Identity and Survival: Understanding Ladinoization Among Indigenous War Orphans in Post-Conflict Guatemala.
Lisa Hogan
E-mail: LHogan@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Larry Gorbet (director), Anthropology; Jane Buikstra, Anthropology; Caroline Smith, Linguistics; Sherman Wilcox, Linguistics
Areas of interest: Biology and Evolution of Language, Language and Cultural Interpretation, Phonetics, Southwestern Native American Languages, Writing and Writing Systems, Scientific and Technical Discourse
Dissertation Topic: Maturing Temporal Bones as Non-Neural Sites for Transforming the Speech Signal during Language Development

Publications:

Smith, Caroline L., Hogan, Lisa A., and McCraw, Mami O. (2003). Reading aloud a connected text: How the organization of topics affects sentence-final lengthening in English, French, and Japanese. *Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences,* Barcelona, Spain, 1799-1802.

Smith, Caroline L. and Hogan, Lisa A. (2001). Variation in final lengthening as a function of topic structure. *Proceedings of Eurospeech 2001 Scandinavia,* 7th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology, 955-958.

Hogan, Michael J. and Hogan, Lisa A. (1998). "Impertinent" *by*-sentences in American writing: A cognitive motivation. *Word: Journal of the International Linguistic Association* (August), 49(2): 181-203.
Emira Ibrahimpasic
E-mail: emira@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Carole Nagengast (chair)
Areas of interest: Bosnia-Herzegovina, South Eastern Europe, The Balkans
Dissertation Topic: Women's rights in post-socialist Europe, political involvement of women, women and Islam, human rights and Islam, Eastern Europe in Transition.

Awards/

Honors:

Office of Graduate Studies Graduate Fellowship/CHE Scholarships, New Mexico Graduate Scholars Award (3% Scholarship), Karl Schwerin Graduate Fellowship Award.
Sara R. Jamieson
E-mail: sara_jamieson@yahoo.com
Dissertation Committee: Suzanne Oakdale (Chair), Louise Lamphere
Areas of interest: Cultural revitalization, life cycle rituals, constructs of gender and gender relations. Region of interest is South America.
Dissertation Topic: The Role of Life-Cycle Rituals in Wayú Cultural Revitalization in Venezuela

Awards/

Honors:

3% percent Tuition Scholarship, Karl Schwerin Award, Frieda Butler Award
Publications: Accepted by the Journal of Latin American Lore:"Urbanization and Changing Notions of Female Empowerment: The Symbolic Revaluation of the Girls' Puberty Ceremony among Urban Wayú of Maracaibo, Venezuela."
Miria Kano
E-mail: miriastar@yahoo.com
Dissertation Committee: Mari Lyn Salvador (Chair), Suzanne Oakdale
Areas of interest: ritual, religion, gender, identity, sensory anthropology, ethnoaesthetics
Dissertation Topic: The study of the leadership and lives of four New Mexico women rabbis through the use of life history, performance and visual anthropology methodologies.  I investigate the ways in which each rabbi constructs and uses personal narratives to address contemporary religious, political and social concerns.
Nicole Coffey Kellett
E-mail: cole@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Carole Nagengast
Areas of interest: The Peruvian Highlands, microfinance, economic development, globalization, and NGOs
Dissertation Topic:

My dissertation research focuses on the impacts of microfinance on women in the Andahuaylas region of south central highland Peru through identifying and exploring how women themselves define their needs and aspirations. My goal is to identify specific ways in which microfinance organizations can enhance their ability to alleviate poverty through correlating with socio-cultural practices,beliefs, and goals.

Awards: Society for Applied Anthropology President's Poster Award, 2000, 2001
Conferences:

2004 Fighting to the Last Breath: Protecting the Petroglyph National Monument. Video Documentary, Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting, Dallas, Texas.

 

2004 Fighting to the Last Breath: Protecting the Petroglyph National Monument. Video Documentary, Anthropology Graduate Student Symposium, University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico

 

2003 Trash and Tourism in Belize, Central America. Anthropology Graduate Student Symposium, University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

 

2001 A World Wide Web of Waste: Community Development, Waste Management and Electrical Generation in Belize, Central America. Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting, Mérida, Mexico.

 

2001 Four Futures for Flagstaff, Arizona. Poster Presentation: Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting, Mérida, Mexico.

 

2000 Assessing the Feasibility of a Spouted Bed Biomass Gasifier in Belize, Central America. High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico.

 

2000 Community Perceptions of Forestland Use in the Verde Valley, Arizona. Poster Presentation: Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting, San Francisco, California.

Publications: 2000 Coffey, Nicole and Joshua Hendrick A World Wide Web of Waste: A Rapid Assessment Study of Waste Management and Electrical Generation in Belize, Central America. Report prepared for Fifth Sun Development Fund and the Belizean Government.
Philip Laverty
E-mail: laverty@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Les Field (Chair), Sylvia Rodriguez, David Dinwoodie
Areas of interest: North American Indians, California Indians, Ohlone/Costanoan/Esselen, policy and law, federal acknowledgement, place attachment, ethnohistory, social & cultural change, historical consciousness, John Peabody Harrington, Spanish borderlands, missionization, race, ethnicity, & class, colonial/postcolonial theory, indigenous peoples, states, nationalisms, applied & collaborative anthropology, public history
Dissertation Topic: My doctoral research is with the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation of Monterey County, California; a native group seeking to clarify its status as an American Indian tribe with the federal government through the Federal Acknowledgment Process. I explore the social and cultural mechanisms of place attachments that have fostered community maintenance, as well as the historical transformations in place-names and attachments in the context of multiple layers of cataclysmic colonization and accelerated development in Monterey since the 1950s. Throughout, I interrogate the interweaving of anthropological theory and the legally mandated federal acknowledgment criteria with implications for unacknowledged tribes and indigenous peoples seeking recognition in various national settings.
Tad McIlwraith
E-mail: tadm@shaw.ca
Dissertation Committee: David Dinwoodie (Chair), Keith Basso; Sylvia Rodriguez
Areas of interest: Athapaskan ethnology, linguistic anthropology, environmental anthropology
Dissertation Topic: The Meaning and Persistence of Subsistence Food Gathering at Iskut, British Columbia, Canada. The dissertation uses methods from linguistic anthropology (ethnography of speaking, discourse analysis) to explore the continuing role and meaning of hunting, fishing, and plant gathering among Athapaskan speakers at Iskut Village.
Char Peery
E-mail: cpeery@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: David Dinwoodie
Areas of interest: linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, Mixtecs, gender & human rights
Gwendolyn Saul
E-mail: gwendolynsaul@hotmail.com
Dissertation Committee: Beverly Singer
Areas of interest:

Navajo Nation, Native North America, A collaborative Navajo community oral history project in

Tsehootsooi/Ft.Defiance, Arizona

Dissertation Topic: Museum studies, oral history, American Indian representation, ethnographic fieldwork method
Research Topic: My research is concerned with a community oral history project in Tsehootsooi/Ft.Defiance, AZ, on the Navajo Nation. Some of the goals o
f this project are to provide useful teaching material for the local school district and to establish an archive of historical narratives for the community and the Navajo Nation at large.
Naomi Gabriela Schwartz
E-mail: ngschwartz@hotmail.com
Dissertation Committee: (Chair) Suzanne Oakdale, Karl Schwerin (Anthropology), Melissa Axelrod (Linguistics), Terry McCarty (ASU, Education, Anthropology)
Areas of interest: ecuador
Dissertation Topic: My dissertation is an ethnographic study of the changes in Otavaleño culture due to diaspora, 
globalization and western hegemony. The voices of my fictive kin from the communities of
Pinsaqui, Peguchi and Otavalo, are reflected in life history interviews that I conducted in Quichua. 
I also critically analyze the cultural changes I have witnessed as a participant observer from 1992-2003. Multiple aspects of Otavaleño life are examined as well as the festivales of Inti Raimi/San Juan, and Yamor.
Awards and Honors:

Student Research Allocations Committee (SRAC),

Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA)

 

General Research Project Grant (GRD)                                      

Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA)

 

Tinker Foundation LAII Field Research Grant (FRG)

Latin American Studies Department

 

Anthropology Department Travel Award

Department of Anthropology

 

Student Award for Excellent Lecture Presentation, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology Docent Program

 

 

Publications:

2005 A Re-enactment   2005 A Re-enactment in Quechua of Two Market-Vendor Dialogues, from one of  the

                                      chapters (by Linda Seligmann) in the volume, Quechua Verbal Artistry, upon which volume the

                                      Delgado/Schechter ARI-funded CD-ROM project is based.

  Santa Cruz, California

 

   Spring 2004 Mother Universe Giving Birth and Otavaleño Pair. (Art). Las Noticias

   Estudiantiles, Volume 20, Issue 3 (P. 9) Albuquerque, New Mexico        

 

  Winter, 2003    SOLAS Community Celebrations. (Article). Las Noticias Estudiantiles, Volume

   20,  Issue 2 (p. 6) Albuquerque, New Mexico

 

  Fall, 2002 Shuc Shungulla: Paz (Art). Las Noticias Estudiantiles, Volume 17, Issue 1 (p. 8).   

  Albuquerque, New Mexico

 

Summer, 2002 Shuc S    Summer, 2002 Shucungulla: Amantes. (Art). Las Noticias Estudiantiles, Volume 16,

  Issue 4 (p. 4). Albuquerque, New Mexico

 

Spring, 2002 Shuc Shu  

   Spring, 2002 Shuc Shungulla: Amantes. (Art). The Alibi, March 28-April 3 (p. 21).Albuquerque, New Mexico

 

   Spring, 2001 Taita Imbabura Speaks in Quichua. (Article). Las Noticias Estudiantiles,

   Volume 17, Issue 3 (p.1-5). Albuquerque, New Mexico

 

   Fall, 2000 Lucilla. (Poetry).   Nature’s Echoes, Library of Congress, ISBN–1-58235-564-9

   Owing Mills, MD

 

Conference Presentations:

April 22-23, 2005 Latin American eLCTL Conference. Language Acquisition Resource Center. San Diego State University. San Diego, California

1996 (July 29-Aug. 9)  Quichua, Quechua, Spanish Translator/Interpreter (1) Annual Meeting of the United Nations Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. (2) The United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations. Geneva, Switzerland