UB's Bacigalupo Named 2009-10 Resident Fellow of the National Humanities Center

BUFFALO, N.Y -- Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology at the University at Buffalo, a scholar recognized for her research into the shamanic practices of Chile's Mapuche Indians, has been named a 2009-10 Fellow of the National Humanities Center (NHC) in North Carolina's Research Triangle.

She will be one of 33 distinguished scholars from institutions across the United States who will take leave from their normal academic duties to comprise the center's 32nd class of resident fellows. Each will work individually on a substantial research project and will have the opportunity to share ideas in seminars, lectures and conferences at the center.

Bacigalupo is the author of "Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power and Healing among Chilean Mapuche" (University of Texas Press, 2007), the first comprehensive examination of the machi (Mapuche shamans), their gendered practices and their use of a unique tree in ritual transvestitism and political defiance.

She is also the author of three books on Mapuche culture and machi practice published in Chile, and more than three dozen journal articles and book chapters on religion, ritual and healing, gender and sexuality.

Her NHC project is titled "Mapuche Memory, Forgetting, Shamanic Historical Consciousness: The Making of Francisca Colipe and Her Mapuche Community in Chile," for which she also has received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and an NEH Fellowship.

The fellows are funded by $900,000 in grants from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Jessie Ball DuPont Fund, the National Endowment for the Humanities and contributions from center alumni.

In addition to Bacigalupo, seven UB faculty members have been named NHC resident fellows since the fellowships were established in 1978: Winnifred F. Sullivan, J.D., Ph.D., associate professor of law and religion (2006-07); Carolyn Higbie, Ph.D., professor of classics (2003-04); Jiyuan Yu professor of philosophy and adjunct associate professor of classics (2003-04); Thomas E. Keirstead, Ph.D., associate professor of history (2000-01); Deidre S. Lynch, Ph.D., professor of English (2000-01); Susan Guettel Cole, Ph.D., professor of classics (1996-97), and Robert Roy Edwards, Ph.D., professor of English (1985-86).

The National Humanities Center is a privately incorporated independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. Since 1978 the center has awarded fellowships to leading scholars in the humanities, whose work at the center has resulted in the publication of more than 1,200 books in all fields of humanistic study. The center also sponsors programs to strengthen the teaching of the humanities in secondary and higher education.

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system and its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB's more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.