Transformational journeys
Subtitle: an ethnologist's memoir
By: Victoria R. Bricker
Series: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society -- volume 106, part 5; Transactions of the American Philosophical Society -- v. 106, pt. 5.
Publisher: American Philosophical Society Press
Published: 2017
Place of publication: Philadelphia, PA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 328
ISBN-13: 9781606180655
Subjects: Ethnologists; Biography; Mayas; Social life and customs
Description: This is the professional memoir of an ethnologist, who studies the cultures and languages of ethnic groups, in the present and in the past. Victoria R. Bricker's journeys -- from Hong Kong to Shanghai during World War II, to the U.S. after the war, to Germany, Harvard, southeastern Mexico, and eventually to New Orleans -- influenced her choice of ethnology as a career and shaped that career over 50 years. Ethnology served as the stepping stone for intellectual forays into other related fields, such as linguistics, ethnohistory, epigraphy, and astronomy, all focused on the Maya people of southern Mexico and Central America.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Hong kong: where it all began; title: Shanghai: life under Japanese occupation; title: Seattle: becoming an American; title: Stanford and Germany: my first encounter with anthropology; title: Harvard and France: becoming an ethnologist; title: Chiapas: exploring Maya humor; title: Tulane: seeking the antecedents of Maya myth and ritual; title: Elut: teaching and preserving the Maya language; title: Yucatan: relating the Maya present to its past; title: Colonial documents: the past speaks in Maya; title: Moving back in time: reading Maya hieroglyphs; title: Historical astronomy: Maya records of the sky; title: Katrina: aftermath of a disaster; title: Retirement: no, it was not the end of the world; title: Looking back.