Elizabeth A. Brandt
Professor
Ph.D., Sociocultural Anthropology/Linguistics, Southern Methodist University
SHESC Themes: Culture, Heritage and Identity; Societies and their Natural Environments
Field Specializations: Ethnography, Ethnohistory, Gender, Land Use, Languages and Literature, Linguistics, Sociocultural Anthropology
Regional Focus: North America (Southwest)
Contact: Elizabeth Brandt, MC 203H
Research:
Elizabeth Brandt specializes in collaborative work with Native American communities in the U.S. Southwest. She has worked in the New Mexican Pueblo communities of Taos, Picuris, Sandia, Isleta, San Felipe and Zia in the areas of land use, environmental protection, sacred site protection, traditional cultural properties, land claims, educational programs and programs of language renewal. She has also worked in the area with the Navajo, the Western Apache and the Yavapai. Her training is in sociocultural anthropology and linguistics. She also works with Spanish colonial history using primary texts on the Pueblos and oral history with communities. Much of her research is strongly focused to applied community needs and environmental issues.
Brandt is currently working on a project—Sustainability, Senses of Place and Cultural Preservation—that is funded by the Institute of Humanities Research, and which also involves Steve Semken, a geologist with the School of Earth and Space Exploration. Brandt and Semken are fellows during the 2007-2008 academic year. Other members of the project team are Christopher Boone; Peter Iverson, a historian; and Deborah Williams, a SHESC graduate student. The project involves study of the different senses of place of an area that is proposed as a site for one of the world's largest copper mines yet is culturally significant not only to the people who live there, but also to the Yavapai and the Western Apache indigenous peoples who lived in the area and still use it. With her team, Brandt has also applied for a National Institute of the Humanities Planning Grant, which will assist the different stakeholders in the area in planning for the development of cultural interpretations for a trail, the Queen Creek Corridor Project, which will assist the town of Superior, AZ, in sustainable development planning. Partners include the Town of Superior, the Boyce Thompson Arboretum, the National Forest Service and the Arizona Department of Commerce.
Teaching:
Brandt teaches courses in linguistics, ethnographic methods, the Southwest and gender. She is an advisory board member of American Indian Studies and a faculty affiliate of Women's Studies.
Select Publications:
Riegelhaupt, F., Carrasco, R. & Brandt, E. A. (2004). Spanish: A language of indigenous peoples of the Americas. In J. Reyhner, O. V. Trujillo, R. L. Carrasco & L. Lockard (Eds.), Nurturing Native Languages (pp. 129-140). Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University.
Brandt, E. A. (2002). The climate for ethnographic/ethnohistoric research in the Southwest. In S. H. Schlanger (Ed.), Traditions, transitions and technologies: Themes in Southwestern archaeology (pp. 113-128). Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
Contact: Elizabeth Brandt