Research Interests
Maya; Guatemala; indigenous populations of Latin America; storytelling;
sense of place; constructions of cultural identity; gender and emotional
geographies; ethnography and ethnogeography.
Research
"Storytelling, Sacred Specialties, and a Maya Sense of Place"
is the working title of my dissertation, which will be an ethno-geography
of San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala. As a cultural geographer with a background
in Anthropology, I am interested in how storytelling and sense of place
combine to allow for trans-cultural understanding. My original intention
for doctoral work was to focus on maize as a cultural object that holds
mythical, historical, and contemporary importance for highland Maya populations
(see Huff 2006). However, an interesting series of events during fieldwork
in 2006 led me to focus on how a sense of the sacred permeates daily life
in this community.
San Pedro is home to a number of sacred specialists; people who are born
with the "gift" (don) to heal. I have gathered life stories
and accounts from practitioners and users of these services, which include
bonesetting, midwifery, spiritual healing and guidance, herbal medicine,
and others. These stories are extraordinary accounts of daily life and
culture, and form the core of my dissertation. Furthermore, I am intrigued
by how, although Maya spirituality is largely shunned in San Pedro, these
sacred specialties, along with popular stories of the supernatural world,
point to a sacred space that permeates daily life in this almost exclusively
Catholic and Protestant community.
Publications
Huff, Leah Alexandra. 2006. "Sacred Sustenance: Maize, Storytelling,
and a Maya Sense of Place" Journal of Latin American Geography 5(1):
79-96.
Supervisors: Dr. W. George Lovell and Dr. Joyce Davidson
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Leah
Huff, MA (Ph.D. Candidate)