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Photograph of Anya Royce

Anya Peterson Royce

Chancellors' Professor of Anthropology
Chancellors' Professor of Comparative Literature
Adjunct Professor of Folklore
Adjunct Professor of Russian-East-European Studies
Adjunct Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Director, Library/Laboratory in Performaing Arts

(812) 855-0248 | Email | Office Hours
  • Ph.D. in Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley (1974)
  • M.A. in Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley (1971)
  • B.A. in Anthropology and Honors in Humanities, Stanford University (1968)

Geographical Areas of Specialization: Mexico, Russia, and Eastern Europe

Topical Interests: Local and global identities, anthropology of dance, anthropology of the arts, popular theater, ethnic identity, structural anthropology, anthropological writing, anthropology of food

Current Courses: E660 The Arts in Practice and Theory, A221 The Anthropology of Food, and E500 Proseminar in Cultural Anthropology (spring 2010)

Selected Publications


Profile:

As an undergraduate at Stanford University I took Introductory Anthropology to fulfill a distribution requirement. Even though I did not understand all the many possibilities that Anthropology offered then, I declared it my major knowing that understanding people's lives and their values had caught my imagination.

At the end of my junior year, I received a Ford Foundation scholarship to do research for a summer in Mexico on the transition of dance from village to theatre. That summer I saw the Isthmus Zapotec of Juchitan, Oaxaca for the first time at a celebration of music and dance. I was astounded then by their vibrancy and self-confidence and, after thirty-five years of fieldwork among them, I continue to be profoundly impressed by their ability to move with assurance in Mexico and the world and maintain a powerful sense of themselves as Zapotec.

My first book, published in Mexico in 1975, explored this theme of identity, both ethnic and class, among the Zapotec of Juchitan. I have continued field research and writing about the Zapotec, dealing with such diverse topics as household economy, music, fiesta and dance, ethnicity, nationalism and the role of the intellectual. The Zapotec are an important focus for much of my teaching, believing, as I do, that ethnography and the intimate knowledge of a culture is the foundation of Anthropology. My most recent work examines Isthmus Zapotec beliefs about death and their ways of commemorating it.  The book, Becoming an Ancestor: The Isthmus Zapotec Way of Death, is forthcoming from SUNY Press.

Ethnicity and identity, broadly speaking, have been other longstanding research and teaching interests. Questions such as how people define themselves and what contexts help or hinder that process came out of my work with the Zapotec but I have pursued those issues globally and comparatively, trying to develop a theoretical base for understanding those processes no matter what the group. While macro-level processes are crucial, so are the individual responses and balancing the two has been a goal for me.

The Anthropology of dance and performing arts brings together my initial experience as a dancer with my scholarly interest in what and how dance and the performing arts mean in a variety of cultures both past and present. Much of my research and writing lies in this field, first with a foundational book on the anthropology of dance (1977), then with a more specialized book on the relationship of movement and meaning in ballet and mime (1984), and most recently, in The Anthropology of Performing Arts: Artistry, Virtuosity, and Interpretation (2004). My current research focuses on three contemporary American dance companies (Pilobolus, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange) exploring the central questions of who can dance, who gets to create dance, and what meanings can be embedded and embodied in dance that arises out of choreography based on a collaborative process. My students are taking the field in new directions both in terms of theory and in terms of the societies in which they are working.

 

Field Schools:

Heritage and Cultural Diversity in Oaxaca, Mexico


Selected Publications:

Books  
Forth Coming Becoming an Ancestor: The Isthmus Zapotec Way of Death, State University of New York Press, forthcoming
2004 The Anthropology of Performing Arts: Artistry, Virtuosity, and Interpretation, AltaMira Press (date of publication May 2004)
2002 Chronicling Cultures: Long-term Field Research in Anthropology, co-editor with RV Kemper, AltaMira Press.
1984 Movement and Meaning: Creativity and Interpretation in Ballet and Mime . Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
1982 Ethnic Identity: Strategies of Diversity . Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
1977 The Anthropology of Dance. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press (American Dance Guild Book Club selection for January, 1982) (reprinted 2000, with new introductory chapter by DanceBooks, Ltd.)
1975 Prestigo y Afiliación en una comunidad Urbana: Juchitán, Oaxaca. (Serie de Antropologia Social #37) Mexico, D.F.: Instituto Nacional Indigenista. (reprinted in 1991)
Articles  
2008 “Voices of the True Peoples: Indigenous Mexican Poets and Writers for the Theater.” Review essay discussing Poetry and Theater, Vols. 2 and 3 of Words of The True Peoples—Palabras de los Seres Verdaderos: Anthology of Contemporary Mexican Indigenous-Language Writers, edited by Carlos Montemayor and Donald Frischmann (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007). e-misférica 5.2(Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, New York, N.Y.).
2008 “Dance.” In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2d ed., edited by William A. Darity, Jr., 2:223―25.  Detroit, Mich.: MacMillan Reference USA.
2007 “Dance.”  In The Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender, edited by Fedwa Malti-Douglas. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson-Gale.
2005

“Conclusions.” In Anthropologie de la danse: Genèse et construction d’une discipline, edited by Andrée Grau and Georgiana Wierre-Gore, 35-41.  Pantin, France: Centre National de la Danse.

“Prólogo.” In Juchitán:  Testimonios de un pasado mágico, by Gonzalo Jiménez López, 5-  7.  Oaxaca de Juarez, Oax.: Instituto Oaxaqueño de las Culturas/CONACULTA/Delegación Regional de Tehuantepec/PACMYAC.

2002 With RV Kemper, " El Proyecto Etnografico y la Teoria Antropologico," in Homenaje por el Profesor Fernando Camara Barbachano, Mexico , DF, INAH Coleccion Cientifica, pp.139-148.
2002 With RV Kemper, "Cuestiones Eticas para los antropologos sociales en Mexico : Una perspectiva norteamericano a lo largo plazo," Boletin, Colegio de Etnologos y Antropologos Sociales, A.C., #4, Mexico DF, CEAS, pp.2-11.
2002 [with Robert V. Kemper] “Long-Term Field Research: Metaphors, Paradigms, and
Themes.”  In Chronicling Cultures: Long-Term Field Research in Anthropology, edited by Robert V. Kemper and Anya Peterson Royce, xiii–xxxviii.  Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press.
2002 "Learning to See, Learning to Listen: Thirty Years of Fieldwork with the Isthmus Zapotec," in Chronicling Cultures: Long-term Field Research in Anthrpology, eds. RV Kemper and AP Royce, AltaMira Press, pp8-33.
  Poetry published in Qualitative Inquiry (2002, 2004) and in the anthology A Linen Weave of Bloomington Poets (2002)
1998 With Robert V. Kemper, "Finding a Footing on the Moral High Ground: Connections, Interventions, and More Ethical Implications," Human Organization 57 (3): 328-330.
1998 "Commedia dell' Arte," in Encyclopedia of Folklore and Literature, in press. pp.135-138
1996 "A Just Community: Social Implications of NAFTA," Keynote address presented at the Congreso Internacional sobre lós impactos del Tratado del Libre Comercio en la Educación, Puebla, Mexico, Universidad Madero, proceedings in press.
1992 "Music, Dance and Fiesta: Definitions of Isthmus Zapotec Community," Latin American Anthropology Review 3: 51-60, 1991.
1990 "Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Role of the Intellectual," Ethnicity and the State , Judith Toland and Ronald Cohen, eds. Volume IX, Political Anthropology Series. Transaction Press, New Brunswick, N.J. and Oxford, UK. (Fall 1991).
1989 "Who was Argentina? Player and Role in the late 17th c. commedia dell'arte," Theatre Survey 30 (1/2): 45-57.
1987 [with Anthony Seeger] “Music, Dance, and Drama.”  In Latin America: Perspectives on a Region, edited by Jack W. Hopkins, 201–14.  New York:  Holmes and Meier.
“Limits of Innovation in Dance and Mime.”  Semiotica 65(3/4): 269–84.
“Masculinity and Femininity in Elaborated Movement Systems.”  In Masculinity/Femininity: Basic Perspectives, edited by June Machover Reinisch, Leonard A. Rosenblum, and Stephanie A. Sanders, 315–43.  New York: Oxford University Press.
1986 "The Venetian Commedia: Actors & Masques in the Development of the Commedia dell'Arte." Theatre Survey 27 , (1/2):69-87.
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