SPOTLIGHT

Becoming An Ancestor: The Isthmus Zapotec Way of Death, just published by SUNY Press, is the latest book by Anya Peterson Royce, Chancellor's Professor of Anthropology  at Indiana University. 

            Described as "powerful and beautifully written" and a "model of ethnographic research and presentation," this book documents the communal and individual responses to death by the Isthmus Zapotec of Juchitán and traces the ways in which these beliefs and actions cut across many domains of Zapotec culture. This is an ethnography of death, what the Isthmus Zapotec of Juchitán believe about it, how they commemorate it, and how they grieve.

            Becoming An Ancestor continues the ethnographic work begun in Mexico by Royce in 1967 while still an undergraduate at Stanford University. Drawn initially by the processes and properties involved in the transition of dance from village to theatre, she soon  focused on questions of ethnicity, local nationalism, and global participation. Her  research has examined the role of intellectuals as promoters of political and cultural identity, the aesthetics of ordinary life, the webs of relationships engendered by celebrations, and the extraordinary cycle of fiestas called velas. These last will be the subject of Royce's next book about the Zapotec of Juchitán.

            Her first book, Prestigio y afiliación en una comunidad urbana:  Juchitán, Oaxaca (1975) was reprinted in 1990 in a special collection of important books on indigenous peoples of Mexico.  Her experience of long-term ethnographic research  provided the foundation for the volume, Chronicling Cultures: Long-Term Field Research in Anthropology  (2002), which she co-edited with Robert V. Kemper.

            Royce brings the craft and sensitivity of ethnography to her work in dance and performing arts.  In 1974, she published The Anthropology of Dance, the first book in what has now become an established field within anthropology.  Acknowledged as one of the anthropological pioneers in the study of dance and performing arts, Royce subsequently published Movement and Meaning:  Creativity and Interpretation in Ballet and Mime (1984), oversaw the publication in 2002 of a second edition of The Anthropology of Dance with a new introductory chapter, and in 2004, published The Anthropology of the Performing Arts: Artistry , Virtuosity and Interpretation in a Cross-Cultural Perspective.  This book has been called a landmark text in situating performance, music, dance, and drama within a global context.  It questions approaches to performance that have been predicated exclusively on Western traditions and understandings and provides a gateway to interpreting the mastery and  beauty of performance as integral to cultures everywhere.  Her most recent research examines the creative processes and collaborative philosophy embodied by the Pilobolus Dance Theatre and is to be published as Pilobolus: The Anatomy of a Collaborative Creative Enterprise, 1971-2010.  Royce's work has been translated and published in Spanish, French, and Polish.   

            Royce received a BA with Distinction, Departmental Honors in Anthropology, and Honors in Humanities from Stanford University in 1968 and an MA and a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971 and 1974. In 2010, she received an Honorary Doctorate, D.Litt. honoris causa, from the University of Limerick.  In addition to her appointment as Chancellor's Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University, she also holds the title of Chancellor's Professor of Comparative Literature. She has adjunct appointments and affiliations at Indiana University with the Department of Folklore, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies, the Department of American Studies, and the Minority Languages and Cultures Program.  
  
            Royce has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Bogliasco Fellow, and a Delmas Fellow.  She has been awarded research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Sciences Research Council, and the American Philosophical Society.  She has been a Phi Beta Kappa Society Visiting Scholar,  as well as a Couper Scholar.  She consults internationally for the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, the Silesian Academy of Dance and Dramatic Arts, and the Qatar National Research Fund. She serves on the International Board of Timescapes, a multiyear project examining longitudinal qualitative research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain. She also serves as External Examiner for the MA in Ethnochoreology at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick.   

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