SAR Announces 2019-2020 Resident Scholars

The School for Advanced Research (SAR) is pleased to announce the 2019–2020 class of resident scholars. For over four decades, SAR has awarded nine-month appointments to a selection of scholars who have completed their research, providing them with the time, space, and collaborative support needed to prepare manuscripts or dissertations on topics important to the understanding of humankind. Fellows develop their work in a unique learning environment on the historic Santa Fe, New Mexico, campus that provides a combination of solitude, freedom from institutional responsibilities, and the lively exchange of ideas. Scholars who complete a residency at SAR become part of an alumni network of nearly three hundred scholars in over thirty countries who have received prestigious academic appointments and other influential roles. This year’s fellowships are funded in part by the Weatherhead Endowment, the Katrin H. Lamon Endowment for Native American Art and Education, the Anne Ray Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Attend the introductory colloquium with all five scholars // September 18, 2019 // Noon

C.J. Alvarez’s book, A History of the Chihuahuan Desert, is the first history of the desert organized around the territory of an ecosystem, focusing on how human experiences on the ground have been shaped by desert conditions. Dr. Alvarez’s work elevates the voices of desert and border dwellers so that they can be heard and understood by those living outside the drylands of the international divide. In addition, he intends for the project to speak to people who inhabit the Chihuahuan Desert itself. A History of the Chihuahuan Desert argues for a reappraisal of desert history as a way of revealing the mutual constitution of political forces and environmental conditions. Learn more…

 Register to attend this scholar’s colloquium // October 23, 2019 // Noon

In 1896 archaeologists opened a room in Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, that was closed and burned by the Chacoan people around AD 1100. Inside that room lay the majority of all known Chacoan cylinder jars—a vessel form now known to have been used in consuming cacao-based drinks. The dramatic destruction of the vessels on that day in the early twelfth century speaks both to the power of the jars and the importance of terminating them to remove that power when the ritual associated with them was rejected by the Chacoan people. Dr. Crown explores the interconnections among drinking practices, the catalytic potency of animated objects, crafts production, exchange, ritual, knowledge, and status hierarchies. Learn more…

 Register to attend this scholar’s colloquium // October 2, 2019 // Noon

The arrival of the Delhi Metro—an ultra-modern, high-tech, and highly surveilled urban rail system and South Asia’s first major multiline metro—has become a touchstone for discussions of urban development, gendered social mobility, and India’s increasingly aspirational culture. Dr. Sadana’s research illustrates how different classes of Indians intersect in the day to day and shows what is at stake for ordinary people, as well as governments, when it comes to the promise of infrastructure. Her project lays out the aspirational landscape of people’s daily itineraries while also exploring how the state—Delhi’s urban agencies and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation—manages the city’s development in a process that Sadana terms “aspirational planning.” Read more…

 Register to attend this scholar’s colloquium // October 16, 2019 // Noon 

The Meanings of Latino Fatherhoods focuses on the diverse experiences of Latino men in the role of fathers and explores how their cultural experiences influence their views of what it means to be a good father and a good man. For Suárez’s project she pursues such questions as, how do the intersections of class, age, and generation in the United States affect Latino men’s understandings of fatherhood; how do Latino men enact the meanings they attach to fatherhood; how do Latino men monitor one another’s fatherhood; and how do Latino fathers describe the emotional labor of fathering? Read more…

 Register to attend this scholar’s colloquium // November 13, 2019 // Noon 

Davina Two Bears’s research documents the history of the Old Leupp Boarding School (OLBS), a Navajo federal Indian boarding school in operation from 1909 to 1942, and explores Diné (Navajo) survivance within the context of this school. Two Bears employs decolonizing research methods framed by postcolonial theory to investigate the OLBS, which currently exists as a historic archaeological site. She explores how her Diné ancestors utilized their cultural foundations to meet the challenges imposed upon them by a settler society and relates the positive stories of Native survivance achieved within the OLBS. Read more…

 Register to attend this scholar’s colloquium // November 6, 2019 // Noon 

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