Paul Eiss
Associate Professor
Ph.D.: University of Michigan, 2000
Department Member Since: 2000
Biography
Paul K. Eiss is a graduate of the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan, whose work is based upon ethnographic and archival research in Mexico. In recent and forthcoming publications, Eiss explores such topics as: the politics of labor, land tenure and ethnicity; popular religion; indigenous education; value; performance; and archives and historical memory.
His book manuscript (In the Name of El Pueblo: Place, Community, and the Politics of History in Yucatan. Duke University Press, 2010.) is an anthropology and history of the emergence and transformation of “el pueblo” as a political, material and cultural entity, from the eighteenth century to the present. Eiss has explored this topic through extensive periods of archival research in Yucatán, Mexico City, and Spain, and ethnographic fieldwork in the Hunucmá region of northwestern Yucatan, among Maya- and Spanish-speaking inhabitants of pueblos and ex-haciendas. In the Name of El Pueblo relates long-term conflicts over communal possessions in that region to struggles over community, collectivity, and historical memory at local, regional, national, and transnational levels.
Recently, Paul Eiss was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation “New Directions” fellowship for a project on mestizaje and popular theatre in Yucatán. He has also been awarded a National Academy of Education-Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship for his work on indigenous education, as well as the Society for Cultural Anthropology’s “Cultural Horizons” prize, for his article, “Hunting for the Virgin,” and a Fulbright-I.I.E. grant for dissertation research in Mexico. Eiss serves as Associate/Book Review editor of the Hispanic American Historical Review.
Eiss has taught a variety of undergraduate courses in anthropology and history, including: “The Development of Caribbean Culture;” “Mayan America;” “The Politics and Culture of Memory;” “Objects of Value;” “Art, Anthropology and Empire;” “Extreme Ethnography;” “Beyond the Border: Inventing the Americas in Culture, History, Literature and the Arts;” and the Senior Colloquium in Anthropology and History. He has also taught several graduate seminars, including: “Agrarian Studies: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives;” and “Memory, History, and the Archives.”
selected Publications
- Books
- In the Name of El Pueblo: Place, Community, and the Politics of History in Yucatán. Duke University Press, 2010.
- Edited Collections
- “Constructing the Maya.” Ethnohistory (Fall 2008).
“Value in Circulation”. Co-editor with David Pedersen of special issue of Cultural Anthropology 17:3 (August 2002).
- Articles
- “Partial Panoramas: Recent Studies of Globalization in Yucatán and Guatemala.” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 14:2 (November 2009): 532-540.
- “El Pueblo Mestizo: Modernity, Tradition, and Statecraft in Yucatán, 1870–1907.” Ethnohistory 55:4 (Fall 2008), 525-552.
- “Beyond the Object: Of Rabbits, Rutabagas, and History.” Anthropological Theory 8:1 (March 2008), 79-97.
- “Deconstructing Indians, Reconstructing Patria: Indigenous Education in Yucatan from Porfiriato to the Mexican Revolution.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 9:1(Spring 2004), 119-150. In theme issue, The Maya Identity of Yucatan, 1500-1935: Re-thinking Ethnicity, History and Anthropology.
- “The War of the Eggs: Event, Archive, and History in Yucatan's Independent Union Movement.” Ethnology, 42:2 (Spring 2003), 87-108.
- “Hunting for the Virgin: Meat, Money and Memory in Tetiz, Yucatán.” Cultural Anthropology 17:3 (August 2002), 291-330. Awarded “Cultural Horizons” prize by the Society for Cultural Anthropology for the best article to appear in Cultural Anthropology in 2002 and 2003.
- “Redemption's Archive: Remembering the Future in a Revolutionary Past.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 44:1 (January 2002), 106-136.
- “A Share in the Land: Freedpeople and the Government of Labour in Southern Louisiana, 1862-1865.” Slavery & Abolition 19:1 (April 1998), 46-89.
- Book Chapters
- “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying El Pueblo.” In Chandra D. Bhimull, David William Cohen, Fernando Coronil, Edward L. Murphy, Monica E. Patterson, Julie Skurski, and David William Cohen, eds., Anthrohistory: Unsettling Knowledge and the Question of Discipline. (University of Michigan Press, 2010, in press).
- “Taking the Measure of Liberty: The Politics of Labor in Revolutionary Yucatán, 1915-1918.” In Ben Fallaw, Gilbert Joseph, and Edward Terry eds., Peripheral Visions: Politics, Society, and the Challenges of Modernity in Yucatan, (University of Alabama Press, 2010), 54-78.
- “The Claims of El Pueblo: Possessions, Politics and Histories.” In Elizabeth Ferry and Mandana Limbert eds., Timely Assets: The Politics of Resources and their Temporalities (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2008), 191-214.
- “To Write Liberation: Time, History and Hope in Yucatan.” In James F. Brooks, Christopher R. N. DeCorse, and John Walton, eds., Small Worlds: Method, Meaning, and Narrative in Microhistory (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2008), 53-75.
- “Redemption’s Archive: Remembering the Future in a Revolutionary Past.” Expanded and revised version of January 2002 above, in Francis Blouin and William Rosenberg, eds., Archives, Documentation and Institutions of Social Memory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2006), 301-320.
- “A Share in the Land: Freedpeople and the Government of Labour in Southern Louisiana, 1862-1865.” Re-publication of April 1998 above, in Volume 6 of the Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series in Louisiana History, Lawrence Powell, ed., Reconstructing Louisiana (Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies of the University of Louisiana, 2001), 58-95.
- Commentaries
- “Constructing the Maya.” Ethnohistory 55:4 (Fall 2008), 503-508.
- “Introduction: Values of Value.” Jointly authored with David Pedersen. Cultural Anthropology 17:3 (August 2002), 291-330.
- Book Reviews
- Rodolfo F. Acuña, Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600-1933. Bulletin of Latin American Research 29:3 (July 2010, in press).
- Lynn Stephen, ¡Zapata Lives! Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico. In American Ethnologist 30:4 (November 2003), on-line.
- Terry Rugeley, Of Wonders and Wise Men: Religion and Popular Cultures in Southeast Mexico, 1800-1876. In Ethnohistory 50:4 (Fall 2003), 749-750.
- Ben Fallaw, Cárdenas Compromised: The Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatán. In Journal of Social History 36:4 (June 2003), 1112-1114.
- Deidre Sklar, Dancing with the Virgin: Body and Faith in the Fiesta of Tortugas, New Mexico. In Journal of Ritual Studies 17:1 (January 2003), 99-100.
- Tom Brass and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues. In Journal of Social History 34:1 (September 2000), 218-220.
Courses Taught
| Introduction to Global Studies |
| Mayan America |
| Art, Anthropology and Empire |
| Extreme Ethnography |
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