Catherine J Allen
CATHERINE J. ALLEN is a cultural anthropologist with an abiding interest in connections and disconnection between the Andean present and the pre-Columbian past. She received her BA in Liberal Arts from St. John's College (1969), and her MA (1972) and PhD (1978) degrees in Anthropology from the University in Illinois in Urbana. She is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at George Washington University where, from 1978 to 2012, she taught courses on South American cultures, the anthropology of art, symbolic anthropology, anthropology in performance, and anthropological theory. Among her academic awards are research fellowships with the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright Specialist Program, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Dumbarton Oaks, and the National Gallery of Art. Her ethnography, The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community, is based on her fieldwork in a Peruvian highland community. She has long-standing commitment to humanistic writing. Her poetry has appeared in Rhino and The Ekphrastic Review and (with Nathan Garner) she is co-author of an ethnographic drama, Condor Qatay: Anthropology in Performance. Her latest book, Foxboy: Intimacy and Aesthetics in Andean Stories, is a work of creative non-fiction, explores parallels between weaving and story telling in the Andes. Currently she is writing papers on Andean ontological orientation, and preparing a chapbook of poems, Moonrise Departure, High Andes.
Supervisors: R. T. Zuidema
Supervisors: R. T. Zuidema
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Papers by Catherine J Allen
ILAS, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
ANTHROPOLOGICA/AÑO XXXIV, N.° 36, 2016, pp. 177-178
In highland Andean communities, certain miniatures inspire complex emotions that go beyond the aesthetic. I have previously examined " pebble play " during pilgrimages, in which devotees make requests of a mountain/saint by building miniature stone house compounds. Here, I explore other types of miniature, in particular tiny stone camelids (inqaychus) considered as gifts from powerful places that invigorate the herds. Guided by Quechua terminology , I explore the ontological assumption that material things such as inqaychus possess subjective personhood. Materiality, composed of nesting hierarchies, is not independent of human activity and moral relationship. I amplify my earlier analysis—which interpreted " pebble play " as characterized by synecdoche and play with dimensionality—using terminology drawn from fractal geometry to approximate a world characterized by dynamic changes in scale and interchangeability of parts and wholes. I conclude by contrasting inqay-chus with alasitas (mass-produced miniatures purchased on holy days, increasingly popular among urban migrants).
Publicado en INTERPRETANDO HUELLAS. Arqueología, Etnohistoria y Etnografía de los Andes y sus Tierras Bajas. María de los Angeles Muñoz, editora. Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas y Museo Arqueológico de la Universidad Mayor de San Simón INIAM-UMSS. 2019
In Quechua- and Aymara-speaking communities of the high Andes, certain small stone objects – variously called illa, qonopa, enqa and enqaychu -- encapsulate the well-being of their human possessors. Described as the “living ones” and “loving ones,” they are said to originate in moments of cosmic readjustment and transition (e.g., solstices), when herd animals belonging to powerful Places are transformed into lithic miniatures. Using data from the Cuzco region of Peru, my paper explores the animacy of these stones, focusing specifically on shifts in relations of dimensionality and enclosure that occur in the moment of petrification. I go on to argue that relationships of dimension and enclosure are intrinsic to the animation of the Andean cosmos, and that this insight illuminates other aspects of Andean cultures, past and present.
http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/Books/bid2517.htm
Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes. Joanne Rappaport and Tom Cummins. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. xvi + 370 pp.
REVIEW ARTICLE The Lettered Mountain: A Peruvian Village’s Way with Writing. Frank Salomon and Mercedes Niño-Murcia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. xix + 368 pp.
AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST 41(1):221-225. February 2014.
ILAS, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
ANTHROPOLOGICA/AÑO XXXIV, N.° 36, 2016, pp. 177-178
In highland Andean communities, certain miniatures inspire complex emotions that go beyond the aesthetic. I have previously examined " pebble play " during pilgrimages, in which devotees make requests of a mountain/saint by building miniature stone house compounds. Here, I explore other types of miniature, in particular tiny stone camelids (inqaychus) considered as gifts from powerful places that invigorate the herds. Guided by Quechua terminology , I explore the ontological assumption that material things such as inqaychus possess subjective personhood. Materiality, composed of nesting hierarchies, is not independent of human activity and moral relationship. I amplify my earlier analysis—which interpreted " pebble play " as characterized by synecdoche and play with dimensionality—using terminology drawn from fractal geometry to approximate a world characterized by dynamic changes in scale and interchangeability of parts and wholes. I conclude by contrasting inqay-chus with alasitas (mass-produced miniatures purchased on holy days, increasingly popular among urban migrants).
Publicado en INTERPRETANDO HUELLAS. Arqueología, Etnohistoria y Etnografía de los Andes y sus Tierras Bajas. María de los Angeles Muñoz, editora. Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas y Museo Arqueológico de la Universidad Mayor de San Simón INIAM-UMSS. 2019
In Quechua- and Aymara-speaking communities of the high Andes, certain small stone objects – variously called illa, qonopa, enqa and enqaychu -- encapsulate the well-being of their human possessors. Described as the “living ones” and “loving ones,” they are said to originate in moments of cosmic readjustment and transition (e.g., solstices), when herd animals belonging to powerful Places are transformed into lithic miniatures. Using data from the Cuzco region of Peru, my paper explores the animacy of these stones, focusing specifically on shifts in relations of dimensionality and enclosure that occur in the moment of petrification. I go on to argue that relationships of dimension and enclosure are intrinsic to the animation of the Andean cosmos, and that this insight illuminates other aspects of Andean cultures, past and present.
http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/Books/bid2517.htm
Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes. Joanne Rappaport and Tom Cummins. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. xvi + 370 pp.
REVIEW ARTICLE The Lettered Mountain: A Peruvian Village’s Way with Writing. Frank Salomon and Mercedes Niño-Murcia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. xix + 368 pp.
AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST 41(1):221-225. February 2014.