Stephen, Lynn

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Stephen, Lynn

PERSONAL:

Born in Chicago, IL. Education: Carleton College, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1979; Brandeis University, Ph.D., 1987.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Anthropology, 1218 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97401-1218. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, teaching assistant, 1983, 1986; Tufts University, Medford, MA, lecturer, 1983; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, lecturer, 1984, 1986-87, visiting scholar, 1987; Northeastern University, Boston, MA, assistant professor, 1987-92, associate professor, 1992-97, professor of anthropology, 1997-98, director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 1995-97; University of Oregon, Eugene, professor of anthropology, 1998—, distinguished professor of arts and sciences, 2003—, chair of anthropology department, 2001-04. Visiting faculty member at Radcliffe College, 1994, 1996.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grants and fellowships from National Science Foundation, 1993-95, University of California, 1994-95, 1996, 2002-03 (declined), Wenner-Gren Foundation, 1994-95, 1997-98, Center for U.S. Mexican Studies, 1995, and National Endowment for the Humanities, 1999-2000; Radcliffe Institute fellow, 2004-05.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with James Dow) Class, Politics, and Popular Religion in Mexico and Central America, Society for Latin American Anthropology (Washington, DC), 1990.

Zapotec Women, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1991, 2nd edition published as Zapotec Women: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Globalized Oaxaca, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2005.

(Editor and translator) Maria Teresa Tula, Hear My Testimony: Maria Teresa Tula, Human Rights Activist of El Salvador, South End Press (Boston, MA), 1994.

Women and Social Movements in Latin America: Power from Below, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1997.

Zapata Lives! Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2002.

(Editor, with others) The Americas Reader: Culture, History, and Representation, Blackwell (London, England), 2002.

(Editor, with Matthew C. Gutmann, Felix V. Matos Rodriguez, and Patricia Zavella) Perspectives on Las Américas: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation, Blackwell (London, England), 2003.

(Editor, with Shannon Speed and R. Aída Hernández Castillo) Dissident Women: Gender and Cultural Politics in Chiapas, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 2006.

Transborder Lives: Indigenous Oaxacans in Mexico, California, and Oregon, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2007.

Contributor to books, including Women's Participation in Mexican Political Life, edited by Victoria Rodriguez, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1998; and Women and Civil War: Impact, Organizations, and Action, edited by Krishna Kumar, Lynne Reinner Press (Boulder, CO), 2001. Contributor to journals, including the Journal of Latin American Anthropology, Latin American Perspectives, American Ethnologist, Latin American Research Review, and Latino Studies Journal.

SIDELIGHTS:

Lynn Stephen is an archaeologist whose primary interest is the intersection of culture and politics with a focus on issues such as ethnicity, gender, class, and nationalism in Latin America. Stephens interviewed women activists from El Salvador, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile for her book Women and Social Movements in Latin America: Power from Below. Through these interviews and various case studies the author provides a look at women's ability to organize grassroots political organizations. She also explores the influence of a machismo society on the ability of its women to be politically active. James D. Hurtig, writing in Economic Development & Cultural Change, noted of the book: "In each case the woman's personal life history is interwoven with her insights into the basis for women's struggles and effective strategies for change. These accounts are compelling in their intimacy, and several tell stories of suffering, sacrifice, and commitment that are profoundly moving." In the Historian, Susan K. Besse predicted: "This book should be of great interest to students seeking to understand the lived reality of poor Latin American women, as well as to political activists and feminist theorists striving to imagine and implement new, more globally relevant feminist practices."

Zapata Lives! Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico explores how those involved in the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1994 used the political symbolism of the famous early twentieth-century Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata for their rebellion against globalization. Stephen also discusses how the Mexican government itself has used a similar Zapata-based symbolism to try to unite the country—once in the 1930s and again in the 1990s—when the government sought to gain support for the North American Free Trade Association treaty. Thomas Benjamin, writing in History: Review of New Books, referred to the book as "a product of careful and intelligent investigation, combining both anthropological fieldwork and historical research." Latin American Politics and Society contributor Stephen Lewis noted that the author's "exploration of the role of women in contemporary Zapatismo is a major contribution." Lewis went on to call Zapata Lives! "an ambitious, well-executed study that speaks to a broad audience."

Stephen is also author of Zapotec Women, first published in 1991 with a second edition appearing in 2005 as Zapotec Women: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Globalized Oaxaca. The book focuses on the lives of women living in the Zapotec community of Teotitlan del Valle in Oaxaca, Mexico. The author is largely interested in documenting how these women transformed their lives and attained a degree of entrepreneurial success in a worldwide capitalistic market through their rug-weaving enterprises. "Stephen's book banishes stereotypes of the ‘from traditional to modern’ process to provide the reader with a nuanced understanding of a Oaxacan context of daily life," reported Sandra Niessen in Man. Niessen added: "The current volume is well-constructed through an elegant interweaving of individual voices in narrative transcription, with explanatory descriptions of the conditions—historical, political, economic, social—which have shaped those voices."

Stephen has also served as editor or coeditor of several books, including Maria Teresa Tula's Hear My Testimony: Maria Teresa Tula, Human Rights Activist of El Salvador, which Stephen edited and translated. This book features Tula's testimony about the victims of human rights abuses in El Salvador. According to Kathleen Logan in the Latin American Research Review, Stephen also writes of her "close collaboration with … Tula in all aspects of the production of the final work, including the contestation, altering of worldviews, and friendship that developed from their collaboration." In Perspectives on Las Américas: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation, Stephen and fellow editors Matthew C. Gutmann, Felix V. Matos Rodriguez, and Patricia Zavella bring together previously published articles on a variety of topics focusing on Latin American life and culture, from farm workers to Latin American artists. "As a work designed for students Perspectives on Las Américas has proved itself a success," concluded Rebecca Earle in the Journal of Latin American Studies.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Anthropologist, September, 1992, John M. Watanabe, review of Class, Politics, and Popular Religion in Mexico and Central America, pp. 714-715; September, 1998, Lisa Baldez, review of Women and Social Movements in Latin America: Power from Below, p. 785.

American Ethnologist, November, 1994, Michael B. Whiteford, review of Class, Politics, and Popular Religion in Mexico and Central America, pp. 1074-1075; August, 1995, Karen Brodkin Sacks, review of Hear My Testimony: Maria Teresa Tula, Human Rights Activist of El Salvador, p. 670; May, 1999, Joann Martin, review of Women and Social Movements in Latin America, p. 482.

American Historical Review, April, 2003, David Carey, Jr., review of Zapata Lives! Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico, pp. 550-551.

Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History, October, 1993, Florence E. Babb, review of Zapotec Women, pp. 276-277; October, 1998, Heidi Tinsman, review of Women and Social Movements in Latin America, p. 324; January, 2003, Arthur Schmidt, review of Zapata Lives!, p. 441.

Choice, October, 1992, E. Bastida, review of Zapotec Women, p. 366; July-August, 1995, W.Q. Morales, review of Hear My Testimony, pp. 1795-1796; March, 1998, review of Women and Social Movements in Latin America, p. 1281; September, 2002, P.R. Sullivan, review of Zapata Lives!, p. 166.

Economic Development & Cultural Change, July, 1999, Janise D. Hurtig, review of Women and Social Movements in Latin America, p. 899.

Hispanic American Historical Review, August, 2004, Samuel Brunk, review of Zapata Lives!, p. 550.

Historian, summer, 1999, Susan K. Besse, review of Women and Social Movements in Latin America, p. 924.

History: Review of New Books, Thomas Benjamin, spring, 2002, review of Zapata Lives!, p. 104.

Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, fall, 1999, Philip Oxhorn, review of Women and Social Movements in Latin America, p. 129.

Journal of Latin American Anthropology, November, 2006, Michael James Higgins, review of Zapotec Women: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Globalized Oaxaca, p. 453.

Journal of Latin American Studies, May, 1999, Maxine Molyneux, review of Women and Social Movements in Latin America, p. 535; August, 2003, Shannan L. Mattiace, review of Zapata Lives!, p. 641; November, 2004, Rebecca Earle, review of Perspectives on Las Américas: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation, p. 809.

Latin American Politics and Society, summer, 2003, Stephen Lewis, review of Zapata Lives!, p. 185.

Latin American Research Review, winter, 1997, Kathleen Logan, review of Hear My Testimony, p. 199; spring, 2000, Tracy Fitzsimmons, review of Women and Social Movements in Latin America, p. 216.

Library Journal, May 1, 1994, Louise Leonard, review of Hear My Testimony, p. 126.

Man, June, 1994, Sandra Niessen, review of Zapotec Women, p. 533.

Mexican Studies-Estudios Mexicanos, summer, 1993, Scott Cook, review of Zapotec Women, p. 303.

Reviews in Anthropology, February, 1996, Martha Woodson Rees, review of Zapotec Women, pp. 107-123.

Signs, spring, 2001, Sarah A. Radcliffe, review of Women and Social Movements in Latin America, p. 905.

Times Literary Supplement, May 10, 2002, Benjamin Smith, review of Zapata Lives!, p. 31.