Barbara Tedlock

Last updated
Barbara Tedlock
Born (1942-09-09) September 9, 1942 (age 82)
Battle Creek, Michigan
Died9/11/2023
OccupationProfessor
Education University of California, Berkeley
Wesleyan University
SUNY Albany
Notable awards American Anthropological Association President's Award
Spouse Dennis Tedlock

Barbara Helen Tedlock (born September 9, 1942- September 11,2023) was an American cultural anthropologist and oneirologist. She was a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York, Buffalo. Her work explores cross-cultural understanding and communication of dreams, ethnomedicine, and aesthetics and focuses on the indigenous Zuni of the Southwestern United States and the Kʼicheʼ Maya of Mesoamerica. Through her study and practice of the healing traditions of the Kʼicheʼ Maya of Guatemala, Tedlock became initiated into shamanism. She was the collaborator and wife of the late anthropologist and poet Dennis Tedlock. [1] [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Barbara Helen Tedlock was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, to Byron Taylor and Mona Gerteresse (O'Connor) McGrath. [1]

Tedlock earned a Bachelor's degree in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley in 1967. In 1973, she earned a Master's in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University. Tedlock completed her PhD in Anthropology at SUNY Albany in 1978. [1] [2]

Career

After earning her PhD, Tedlock taught at Tufts University, Princeton University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of British Columbia. [3] In 1987, Tedlock joined the State University of New York, Buffalo anthropology faculty. [2] That same year, she edited Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations, an anthology significant for presenting cross-cultural perspectives on dreaming. The collection featured cultural perspectives that challenge the typical Western conception of dreaming as a phenomenon existing completely separate from objective reality. [4]

Tedlock examined how linguistic conventions mediate the performance and interpretation of dream experience. She explored how communications about dreams reveal patterns and variations around how different cultures perceive the role and significance of dreaming. For example, the Kʼicheʼ Maya people use the first-person pronoun "I" to narrate dreams with the understanding that this "I" does not necessarily relate to the conscious self of the dream teller. Likewise, the use of third person pronouns, particularly in relating negative dreams, communicates distance between the dream teller and the experience of the dream self. [5]

Tedlock rejected the existence of any hard boundary between anthropologist and the peoples with whom they interact in the field. She advocated for narrative ethnography as a methodological innovation that honored and more accurately represented the intertwining, interdependent relationship between anthropologist and the subjects of their research. [6]

From 1993 to 1997, Tedlock, with collaborator and husband Dennis Tedlock, edited American Anthropologist, the American Anthropological Association's flagship journal. [7] In 1998, she became the chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Buffalo. [3] Tedlock serves on the Anthropology and Humanism advisory board. [8]

Publications

Books

Time and the Highland Maya (1992) [9]

The Beautiful and the Dangerous: Encounters with the Zuni Indians (2001) [10]

The Woman in the Shaman's Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine. (2005). [11]

Co-authored or edited books

Teachings from the American Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy (1975) [12]

Dreaming: Anthropological and psychological interpretations. (1987) [13]

Selected articles and book chapters

Tedlock, B. (1981). Quiché Maya dream interpretation. Ethos, 9(4), 313-330. doi.org/10.1525/eth.1981.9.4.02a00050

Tedlock, B. (1982). Sound texture and metaphor in Quiche Maya ritual language. Current Anthropology , 23(3), 269-272. doi.org/10.1086/202830

Tedlock, B. (1983). Zuni sacred theater. American Indian Quarterly , 93-110. doi:10.2307/1184258

Tedlock, B. (1984). The Beautiful and the Dangerous Zuni Ritual and Cosmology as an Aesthetic System. Conjunctions, (6), 246-265. jstor.org/stable/24515110

Tedlock, B. (1985). Hawks, meteorology and astronomy in Quiché-Maya agriculture. Archaeoastronomy , 8, 80.

Tedlock, B. (1986). Keeping the breath nearby. Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly, 11(4), 92-94. doi.org/10.1525/ahu.1986.11.4.92

Tedlock, B. (1987). An interpretive solution to the problem of humoral medicine in Latin America. Social science & medicine, 24(12), 1069-1083. doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(87)90022-0

Tedlock, B. (1991). From participant observation to the observation of participation: The emergence of narrative ethnography. Journal of Anthropological Research , 47(1), 69-94. doi.org/10.1086/jar.47.1.3630581

Tedlock, B. (1992). The role of dreams and visionary narratives in Mayan cultural survival. Ethos, 20(4), 453-476. jstor.org/stable/640279

Tedlock, B. (1999). Maya Astronomy: what we know and how we know it. Archaeoastronomy, 14(1), 39.

Tedlock, B. (1999). Sharing and interpreting dreams in Amerindian nations. In D. Schulman & G.G. Stroumsa (Eds.), Dream cultures: Explorations in the comparative history of dreaming, (pp. 87–103.) Oxford University Press. [14]

Tedlock, B. (2001). Divination as a way of knowing: Embodiment, visualisation, narrative, and interpretation. Folklore , 112(2), 189-197. doi.org/10.1080/00155870120082236

Tedlock, B. (2004). Narrative ethnography as social science discourse. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 27, 23-32. doi.org/10.1016/S0163-2396(04)27004-1

Tedlock, B. (2004). The poetics and spirituality of dreaming: A Native American enactive theory. Dreaming, 14(2-3), 183–189. doi.org/10.1037/1053-0797.14.2-3.183

Tedlock, B. (2006). Toward a theory of divinatory practice. Anthropology of Consciousness, 17(2), 62-77. doi.org/10.1525/ac.2006.17.2.62

Tedlock, B. (2007). Bicultural dreaming as an intersubjective communicative process. Dreaming, 17(2), 57–72. doi.org/10.1037/1053-0797.17.2.57

Tedlock, B. (2009). Writing a storied life: Nomadism and double consciousness in transcultural ethnography. Etnofoor, 21(1), 21-38. jstor.org/stable/25758148

Tedlock, B. (2013). Braiding evocative with analytic autoethnography. In S.L. Holman Jones, T.E. Adams, & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography, 358-362. [15]

Co-authored articles

Tedlock, B., & Tedlock, D. (1985). Text and textile: Language and technology in the arts of the Quiché Maya. Journal of Anthropological Research, 41(2), 121-146. doi.org/10.1086/jar.41.2.3630412

Tedlock, D., & Tedlock, B. (2002). The Sun, Moon, and Venus Among the Stars: Methods for Mapping Mayan Sidereal Space. Archaeoastronomy, 17.

Awards

Society of Humanistic Anthropology Prize for Ethnographic Fiction (1986) (for "Keeping the Breath Nearby"). [16]

American Anthropological Association President's Award (1997) (with Dennis Tedlock) [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qʼuqʼumatz</span> Maya creator god of wind and rain

Qʼuqʼumatz was a god of wind and rain of the Postclassic Kʼicheʼ Maya. It was the Feathered Serpent that according to the Popol Vuh created the world and humanity, together with the god Tepeu. It carried the sun across the sky and down into the underworld and acted as a mediator between the various powers in the Maya cosmos. It is considered to be the equivalent of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl and of Kukulkan, of the Yucatec Maya.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xibalba</span> Underworld in Kʼicheʼ Maya mythology

Xibalba, roughly translated as "place of fright", is the name of the underworld in Maya mythology, ruled by the Maya death gods and their helpers. In 16th-century Verapaz, the entrance to Xibalba was traditionally held to be a cave in the vicinity of Cobán, Guatemala. Cave systems in nearby Belize have also been referred to as the entrance to Xibalba. In some Maya areas, the Milky Way is viewed as the road to Xibalba.

<i>Popol Vuh</i> Text recounting Maya mythology and history

Popol Vuh is a text recounting the mythology and history of the Kʼicheʼ people of Guatemala, one of the Maya peoples who also inhabit the Mexican states of Chiapas, Campeche, Yucatan and Quintana Roo, as well as areas of Belize, Honduras and El Salvador.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethnography</span> Systematic study of people and cultures

Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.

Kʼicheʼ are Indigenous peoples of the Americas and are one of the Maya peoples. The eponymous Kʼicheʼ language is a Mesoamerican language in the Mayan language family. The highland Kʼicheʼ states in the pre-Columbian era are associated with the ancient Maya civilization, and reached the peak of their power and influence during the Mayan Postclassic period.

The tzolkʼin is the 260-day Mesoamerican calendar used by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zuni language</span> Language indigenous to New Mexico, US

Zuni is a language of the Zuni people, indigenous to western New Mexico and eastern Arizona in the United States. It is spoken by around 9,500 people, especially in the vicinity of Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, and much smaller numbers in parts of Arizona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Autoethnography</span> Research method using personal experience

Autoethnography is a form of ethnographic research in which a researcher connects personal experiences to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings. It is considered a form of qualitative and/or arts-based research.

Ethnopoetics is a method of recording text versions of oral poetry or narrative performances that uses poetic lines, verses, and stanzas to capture the formal, poetic performance elements which would otherwise be lost in the written texts. The goal of any ethnopoetic text is to show how the techniques of unique oral performers enhance the aesthetic value of their performances within their specific cultural contexts. Major contributors to ethnopoetic theory include Jerome Rothenberg, Dennis Tedlock, and Dell Hymes. Ethnopoetics is considered a subfield of ethnology, anthropology, folkloristics, stylistics, linguistics, literature and translation studies.

Xquic is a mythological figure known from the 16th century Kʼicheʼ manuscript Popol Vuh. She was the daughter of one of the lords of Xibalba, called Cuchumaquic, Xibalba being the Maya underworld. Noted particularly for being the mother of the Maya Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, she is sometimes considered to be the Maya goddess associated with the waning moon. However, there is no evidence for this in the Popol Vuh text itself.

Timeline of anthropology, 1990–1999

<i>Rabinal Achí</i> Maya theatrical play

The Rabinal Achí is a Maya theatrical play written in the Kʼicheʼ language and performed annually in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, Guatemala. Its original name is Xajoj Tun, meaning "Dance of the Tun" instrument also known as wooden drum. This is one of the few surviving performance pieces from before colonization. It takes place every year on January 25 and involves the entire community of Rabinal. A combination of movement, song, and instrumentation meld the piece together. This performance has been a part of Rabinal history for centuries, and continues to be a part of the culture today. The story of the Rabinal Achí centers on a historical feud between Rabinal and Kʼicheʼ, two neighboring cities. Colorful costumes and wooden masks are used to differentiate the characters as they play out their roles in the song-dance-drama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kʼicheʼ kingdom of Qʼumarkaj</span>

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Dennis Ernest Tedlock was an ethnopoeticist, linguist, translator, and poet. He was a leading expert of Mayan language, culture, and arts, best known for his definitive translation of the Mayan text, Popul Vuh, for which he was awarded the PEN translation prize. He co-founded the method of ethnopoetics with Jerome Rothenburg in the late 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Midwifery in Maya society</span>

Midwifery is a women's profession that assists women from pregnancy to newborn care. In some traditional Maya communities, a goddess of midwifery is invoked, and midwives are generally believed to be assigned their profession through signs and visions. In pre-Spanish Yucatan, the aged midwife goddess was called Ixchel.

Robert Marquess Carmack was an American academic anthropologist and Mesoamericanist scholar who was most noted for his studies of the history, culture and societies of contemporary Maya peoples. In particular he conducted extensive research on the K'iche' (Quiché) Mayas of the Guatemalan Highlands in the context of the infiltration and migration of Nahuatl speaking peoples into the Maya cultural areas.

Andrés Xiloj Peruch was a Kʼicheʼ daykeeper from Momostenango in Guatemala. He was also one of the four "chuchkajawib" of Momostenango. After his death, his son Angél became chuchkajaw of the Santa Isabel lineage. Being a native speaker of the Kʼicheʼ language and a practitioner of traditional Maya calendric divination, he served as a consultant for several anthropological studies. He assisted Dennis Tedlock in elaborating his award-winning translation of the ancient Kʼicheʼ document Popol Vuh. Dennis Tedlock has described the translation process as "three-way dialogue among Andres Xiloj, the Popol Vuh text, and myself."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chitinamit</span>

Chitinamit is an archeological site of the Maya civilization in the highlands of Guatemala. It has been identified as Jakawitz, the first capital of the K'iche' Maya. The site is located in the El Quiché department, in the municipality of Uspantán. Chitinamit dates from the Early Classic through to the Late Postclassic periods and covers approximately 2 hectares (220,000 sq ft), making it the largest site in its region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kʼicheʼ language</span> Mayan language spoken by the Kʼicheʼ people

Kʼicheʼ, or Quiché, is a Mayan language spoken by the Kʼicheʼ people of the central highlands in Guatemala and Mexico. With over a million speakers, Kʼicheʼ is the second most widely-spoken language in the country, after Spanish. It is one of the most widely-spoken indigenous American languages in Mesoamerica.

Elisabeth Jane Tooker was an American anthropologist and a leading historian on the Iroquois nations in north-eastern United States.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Barbara Helen Tedlock". Marquis Who's Who. n.d. Archived from the original on 1999-11-28. Retrieved 2020-07-03.
  2. 1 2 3 "Barbara Tedlock - UB People - University Archives - University at Buffalo Libraries". library.buffalo.edu. Retrieved 2020-07-04.
  3. 1 2 "Barbara Tedlock to Head UB Anthropology Department". www.buffalo.edu. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  4. ↑ Lewis, J. R., & Oliver, E. D. (2009). The dream encyclopedia. Visible Ink Press.
  5. ↑ Graham, Laura R. (1999). "Dreams". Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 9 (1/2): 61–64. doi:10.1525/jlin.1999.9.1-2.61. ISSN   1055-1360. JSTOR   43102427.
  6. ↑ Hampshire, Kate; Iqbal, Nazalie; Blell, Mwenza; Simpson, Bob (2014-05-04). "The interview as narrative ethnography: seeking and shaping connections in qualitative research" (PDF). International Journal of Social Research Methodology. 17 (3): 215–231. doi:10.1080/13645579.2012.729405. ISSN   1364-5579. S2CID   145398854.
  7. ↑ "Past Editors". American Anthropologist. Archived from the original on 2019-10-26.
  8. ↑ "Advisory Board". sha.americananthro.org. Retrieved 2020-07-04.
  9. ↑ Tedlock, Barbara. (1992). Time and the highland Maya. University of New Mexico Press. ISBN   0-8263-0577-6. OCLC   855950611.
  10. ↑ Tedlock, Barbara (2007). The beautiful and the dangerous: encounters with the Zuni Indians. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN   978-0-8263-2342-2. OCLC   450469035.
  11. ↑ Tedlock, Barbara (2005). The woman in the shaman's body: reclaiming the feminine in religion and medicine. New York; London: Bantam Books. ISBN   978-0-553-10853-8. OCLC   537620758.
  12. ↑ Tedlock, Dennis; Tedlock, Barbara (1975). Teachings from the American earth: Indian religion and philosophy. Liveright. ISBN   978-0-87140-097-0. OCLC   1174588.
  13. ↑ Tedlock, Barbara (1987). Dreaming: anthropolog. and psychology. interpretations. Cambridge u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Pr. ISBN   978-0-521-34004-5. OCLC   230895960.
  14. ↑ Shulman, David Dean; Stroumsa, Guy G (1999). Dream cultures: explorations in the comparative history of dreaming. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN   9786610471447. OCLC   300411266.
  15. ↑ Holman Jones, Stacy Linn; Adams, Tony E; Ellis, Carolyn (2016). Handbook of autoethnography. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-315-42779-9. OCLC   950518771.
  16. ↑ "SHA Prize Winners | Society for Humanistic Anthropology". sha.americananthro.org. Retrieved 2020-07-04.
  17. ↑ "AAA President's Award - Connect with AAA". www.americananthro.org. Retrieved 2020-07-04.
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