The Speakers:
Teofilo Ruiz
Ruiz is professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and taught at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York before joining UCLA in 1998. He has also been Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton. Professor Ruiz is currently completing three-year terms as President of the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain and Vice-President of the Research Division of the American Historical Association. He is the author of eight books, including Spanish Society 1400–1600 (Longman, 2001), From Heaven to Earth: The Reordering of Castilian Society in the Late Middle Ages, 1150–1350 (Princeton University Press, 2004), Medieval Europe and the World (with Robin Winks; Oxford University Press, 2005), and Spain: Centuries of Crisis, 1300–1474 (Blackwell, 2007). In 1995 he received the Premio del Rey, awarded to the author of the best book on Spanish history, for Crisis and Continuity: Land and Town in Late Medieval Castile (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). During the current academic year Professor Ruiz is embarked on new research as a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Brian Vallo
Vallo is the Museum Director of the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque. A native of Acoma Pueblo, he has served as First Lieutenant Governor of Acoma. He was the founding director for Acoma’s celebrated, recently opened Sky City Cultural Center and Haak’u Museum. He has also worked as Director of Project Development at Cornerstones Community Partnerships in Santa Fe, an organization that works with Pueblos and Hispanic communities to preserve architectural heritage and community traditions in and beyond New Mexico. He has served terms as Vice President to the American Indian and Alaska Native Tourism Association, Board Member of the Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies at UNM, and Board Member of the Chamiza Foundation. His major goal in his current position at IPCC is to develop the museum and its collections as a resource to the nineteen pueblos and to ensure the Center’s long-term sustainability through enhanced public programming, exhibit development, and community-based outreach.
Amy G. Remensnyder
Remensnyder is Associate Professor of History at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Harvard and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley; she also studied at Cambridge University and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. She was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in 1997–8 and held a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2002–3. She is currently working on a book on the Virgin Mary as a symbol of conquest and conversion in medieval Spain and sixteenth-century Mexico. In 1992 she received the Medieval Academy of America’s Van Courtland Elliott Prize for the best first article in the field of Medieval Studies. Her book Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France appeared from Cornell University Press in 1995.
Stanley M. Hordes
Hordes is Adjunct Research Professor at the Latin American and Iberian Institute of the University of New Mexico, having served as New Mexico State Historian from 1981 until 1985. He received his B.A. from the University of Maryland, his M.A. from the University of New Mexico, and his Ph.D. from Tulane University. While completing his doctorate, he received a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in the archives of Spain and Mexico for his dissertation, “The Crypto-Jewish Community of New Spain, 1620-1649: A Collective Biography.” His study of the secret Jews of Mexico revealed that many conversos from Judaism to Catholocism continued to practice their old ancestral faith in secrecy, moving to the Spanish colonies in the New World in order to avoid detection by the Inquisition. When Dr. Hordes assumed the position of New Mexico State Historian in 1981, he began to encounter Catholic and Protestant Hispanic New Mexicans whose families observed customs suggestive of a Jewish background, such as maintaining dietary laws, celebrating the Sabbath on Saturday instead of Sunday, and performing ritual male circumcision. The fruits of his research in New Mexico appeared in his book, To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico (Columbia University Press, 2005), which has received two major awards: the Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá Prize of the Historical Society of New Mexico for outstanding historical publication of the year, and the Border Regional Library Association’s Southwest Book Award.
Sylvia Rodriguez
Rodriguez is Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, where she has been a faculty member since 1988, having previously taught at Carleton College and at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Barnard College (Columbia University) and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. In 1996–7 she held UNM’s Snead-Wertheim Endowed Lectureship in Anthropology and History. Her book The Matachines Dance: Ritual Symbolism and Interethnic Relations in the Rio Grande Valley was published by UNM Press in 1996. In 1997 it received both the Chicago Folklore Prize and the Border Regional Library Association’s Southwest Book Award. Her latest book is Acequia: Water-Sharing, Sanctity, and Space, published in 2006 by the School for Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe. In 2007 Prof. Rodriguez was the recipient of a UNM Faculty Research Acknowledgement Award.
Thomas E. Chávez
Chávez holds his Ph.D. in History from the University of New Mexico. In 2004 he retired as Executive Director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, having previously served as Director of the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe for twenty-one years. In both institutions he initiated and supervised many innovative exhibitions and programs, including the highly acclaimed Portal Program that involves over one thousand Native American artisans selling handmade goods. He also initiated Christmas at the Palace, including Las Posadas, and The Palace Mountain Man Rendezvous and Buffalo Roast. Dr. Chávez and his staff brought back to New Mexico the internationally known Segesser Hide Paintings from Switzerland as well as the Martínez de Montoya documents from England that establish the founding of Santa Fe as early as 1607. He oversaw the land purchases, initial planning, and fundraising for the new state history museum now under construction behind the Palace of the Governors. Dr. Chávez is the author of numerous articles and of seven books, including An Illustrated History of New Mexico (University Press of Colorado, 1992), Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift (UNM Press, 2002), and New Mexico Past and Future (UNM Press, 2006). His many awards include a Fulbright Fellowship for research in Spain, the Distinguished History Award Medal of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Excellence in the Humanities Award from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. In 2002 the UNM Alumni Association presented him with its Zia Award and in 2007 the New Mexican Hispanic Culture Preservation League bestowed upon him the title of El Adelantado.