SAR News 
El Delirio Virtual Campus Tour
We invite you to take a virtual tour of El Delirio. Learn about the origins of the buildings and the historical significance of the sprawling estate that is now SAR’s campus. Join your guide, SAR scholar-in-residence Nancy Owen Lewis, for a delightful online tour complete with archival and contemporary visuals from SAR’s collections.
Rethinking National Parks
Anthropologist, novelist, and SAR’s Katrin H. Lamon resident scholar of 2015–16, David Treuer (Ojibwe), is garnering national attention for his cover story in the May 2021 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, “Return the National Park to the Tribes.” SAR president, Michael F. Brown, reflects on the article and more.
Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of Senses of Place
To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Senses of Place, SAR Press will host Steven Feld, Amahl Bishara, and Kristina Lyons for a virtual conversation about the book’s impact, as well as more recent developments in the field. This event launches a series of discussions focused on place this summer at SAR. Panelists will discuss earthen architecture at several New World archaeological sites in the US Midwest and coastal Peru, Pueblo architecture at sites across the US Southwest, and more.
Members Matter: Russ and Diane Kyncl
SAR members Russ and Diane Kyncl share the fifty-year story of how they became friends with the Edaakie family of Zuni Pueblo, how the late potter Timothy Edaakie helped them to connect with SAR, and why they decided to include SAR in their legacy plan.
Spider Woman’s Knowledge and the Survival of Diné Textile Arts
In each session of his course on Navajo weaving, artist Venancio Aragon takes his students on a journey that exposes the impact of non-Indigenous institutions on Diné peoples and their making, as well as the sovereignty that Indigenous peoples, including artists, have continued to exercise through each moment.
How to Publish Your First Book: SAR Press Talks to Alina Méndez
SAR Press is starting a new blog series comprised of interviews with diverse scholars who have recently published or are in the midst of publishing their first book and who can offer guidance and encouragement to colleagues who are just starting to think about publishing. We hope that these interviews make a small contribution to supporting junior scholars as they begin the publishing process.
Members Matter. Meet Maria.
One of our newest members, Maria, found SAR serendipitously this last year. Stuck at home in Missouri, Maria had been searching for online opportunities to fill the social and intellectual void created by the pandemic-related restrictions. As she told SAR recently, she has always had an interest in the history and culture of New Mexico, specifically Puebloan history and pottery. After discovering one of SAR’s online artist talks, she started exploring our recorded programs on YouTube and signing up for upcoming virtual events to feed her hungry mind.
2021 J. I. Staley Prize Awarded to Laurence Ralph for Renegade Dreams, Living Through Injury in Gangland Chicago
The School for Advanced Research is pleased to announce that the 2021 J. I. Staley Prize will go to Laurence Ralph, professor of anthropology at Princeton University and director of the Center on Transnational Policing, for his 2014 book, Renegade Dreams: Living through Injury in Gangland Chicago (University of Chicago Press).
SAR Learns! $50,000 Awarded to Support Indigenous Artists
The School for Advanced Research (SAR) is pleased to announce our new initiative, SAR Learns! Out of a desire to support intergenerational learning and creativity during the pandemic, SAR Learns! will assist with knowledge transmission specifically within the context of the ongoing pandemic. The program will distribute $50,000, utilizing re-directed grant funds, that will enable sixteen artists to launch or complete a variety of proposed projects.
SAR Remembers Marshall David Sahlins
The School for Advanced Research(SAR) mourns the passing of Marshall David Sahlins: a preeminent anthropologist and SAR supporter whose academic work repeatedly transformed anthropology, and whose activism informed the public. Read two personal reflections by Michael F. Brown (SAR President) and Paul Ryer (Director, SAR Scholar Programs) who like so many leading anthropologists today studied at some point with professor Sahlins.
How to Publish Your First Book: SAR Press Talks to John Arroyo
SAR Press is starting a new blog series comprised of interviews with diverse scholars who have recently published or are in the midst of publishing their first book and who can offer guidance and encouragement to colleagues who are just starting to think about publishing. We hope that these interviews make a small contribution to supporting junior scholars as they begin the publishing process.
SAR Announces 2021-2022 Native Artist Fellows
SAR Announces 2021-2022 Native American Artist Fellows: Lehuauakea, Brandon Adriano Ortiz, and Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty.
The Pandemic Shift: The School for Advanced Research Annual Report
Every year SAR publishes its Annual Report, which describes accomplishments and acknowledges supporters over the previous fiscal year. Our 2019–2020 report is no different, and yet so much has changed, as President Michael F. Brown explains.
Living Nations, Living Words, SAR Welcomes Joy Harjo
The School for Advanced Research (SAR) is pleased to present a virtual program welcoming U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. Reflecting on the upcoming program with SAR, Harjo shares, “The StoryMap project was a way to widen the doorway that my poet laureateship created when I became the first Native U.S. Poet Laureate. It was important to show that there are many Native poets writing poetry alongside each other, and that we speak from a sense of place in which there are no political boundaries imposed by non-Native cultures and political entities.”
SAR Press Top Reads: Indigenous Identity
The books in this list address Indigenous identity from different perspectives and in different ways: Native artists discuss the tensions between art and life; Native anthropologists and historians describe changing forms of identity via stereotyping, genetic science, ecology, and decolonization; and Native writers in various genres tell the stories of their people surviving and thriving, past and present.
The Arroyo Hondo Pueblo Collection Finds a New Home
In 1970 former SAR president Douglas Schwartz began test excavations at the fourteenth-century Pueblo site of Arroyo Hondo, located approximately five miles south of Santa Fe. Earlier this year, SAR made the decision to transfer its only archaeological collection to the Center for New Mexico Archaeology, the state repository for such collections, where it will be able to receive more specialized care.
Remembering Art Wolf and Christine McHorse
Last week, we lost two members of our SAR family. On Sunday, February 14, Art Wolf, the first curator of collections for the Indian Arts Research Center passed away. Just a few days later, 2006 Eric and Barbara Dobkin Native artist fellow Christine McHorse also began her journey into the next world. Read more about their work and legacies.
“It all starts with landscape”: SAR Scholars’ Recent and Upcoming Reflections on Chaco Canyon
In a conversation with SAR’s director of communications and public programs, Ruth Van Dyke describes how the Ancestral Puebloan builders in Chaco Canyon tried to create a “sense of place that emphasized Chaco as the center. Chaco was the fulcrum, and you can see this on the landscape.”
The Equitable Transformation of Communities: A Conversation with John Arroyo
John Arroyo, SAR’s 2018–2019 Mellon fellow, grew up in a largely Mexican and Mexican American community in East LA. Even as a kid, he was thinking about urban issues and the diversity and future of communities like his. He is now a planner who incorporates a humanistic perspective into his work, which allows him to make connections between urban issues, art, and the social sciences.
A Healed Greenwood: Lessons in Restorative Justice Archaeology from Tulsa, Oklahoma
“We began the class with an exercise in humility: writing down our thoughts and beliefs about Greenwood, and comparing that with broad assumptions, rumors, and questions.” Hear from SAR Anne Ray intern, Emily Santhanam, about her experience in the fall 2020 virtual in-depth course Unearthing Violence: Archaeology in the Aftermath of the Tulsa Race Massacre and learn how you can download the recorded course sessions.
Summer Scholar Colloquium: Nicholas Barron Brings the History of Anthropology into the Present
In November 1981, anthropologists and tribal representatives gathered on the Pascua Pueblo Yaqui Reservation in southern Arizona for the 89th International Symposium, hosted by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Although this obscure conference may have been relegated to a footnote in the history of anthropology and the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Nicholas Barron, SAR’s 2020 William Y. and Nettie K. Adams summer scholar, argues that its story helps us to better understand consequential, ongoing political processes and Indigenous histories.
Looking Forward, Looking Back
With the nation’s social and political turmoil as well as an ongoing pandemic, 2020 revealed how now more than ever the perspectives of social science scholars and Native American artists matter. In today’s post, we reflect on the last year and invite you to join us for online programs in the new year.
Guidelines in Action: The University of Colorado Museum Studies Program
Learn more about how the SAR Guidelines for Collaboration are transforming the teaching practices at one university in this guest post by Jen Shannon, curator and associate professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Colorado, Boulder,
Venancio Aragon: Weaving the Colors of the World
Venancio Aragon is the SAR 2020 Rollin and Mary Ella King Native artist fellow. If you ever meet Venancio, you will notice his friendly demeanor and willingness to chat. He is a citizen of the Navajo Nation and what I would consider an award-winning master weaver, although he describes himself as “a humble practitioner of an ancient art.” Along with being an artist, he is also an intellectual, knowledge holder, and student.
A Story Still Being Written: SAR Campus Recognized by Historic Santa Fe Foundation
Community lives not only in people, but in places. Places like El Delirio, originally home to Amelia Elizabeth and Martha Root White and now the home of the School for Advanced Research. Thanks to the vision of so many people—beginning with the White sisters and...
SAR Press Conversations: What Do Ancient Empires Teach Us about the Modern World?
To celebrate the publication of SAR Press’s most recent Advanced Seminar volume, Archaeologies of Empire (2020), we have brought together editors of this book and our previously published Imperial Formations (2007) to discuss new insights and intersections in their work.
Messages and Monuments: Perspectives on Collective Memories
Join SAR on December 10, 2020, for a virtual program exploring the ongoing national dialogues concerning historical markers, monuments, and memory making.
SAR Resident Scholar Colloquium Preview: Stephen Sullivan Listens to the Soundscapes of Gentrification
Join us on November 18 at 2 p.m. (MST) to hear Sullivan discuss “Amplifying Gentrification: Contestations of Sound and Space in Brooklyn, New York.” He is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University and will be speaking as part of our fall Scholar Colloquia series. This online event is free and open to the public.
In the Vault: Beatien Yazz Watercolor
In honor of Veterans Day, the Indian Arts Research Center shares the work of acclaimed Diné (Navajo) painter, Beatien Yazz.
SAR Resident Scholar Colloquium Preview: Alanna Warner-Smith Examines Labor and Inequality in Nineteenth-Century New York City
Join us on November 4 at 2 p.m. (MST) to hear Warner-Smith discuss “Working Hands, Indebted Bodies: The Bioarchaeology of Labor and Inequality in an Era of Progress.” She is PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Syracuse University and will be speaking as part of our fall Scholar Colloquia series. This online event is free and open to the public.