Edgar Martín del Campo

E-mail: VucubCaqix@aol.com

Education:

Current doctoral candidate at SUNY Albany, 2001- (GPA: 4.0)
MA Religion: Claremont School of Theology, 2000 (GPA: 3.9)
BA Biochemistry, Religion, and Biology: Rice University, 1996

Current Research:

The subject of my dissertation research is on nagualism in contemporary Mesoamerica. The nagual is a supernatural creature that is widely attested across Mesoamerican cultures. One of the most common meanings of the nagual refers to a common belief in Mesoamerican religion and cosmology, namely that when any individual person is born, he or she is born with a psychic double, a part of his or her soul that is manifest in the natural world and usually takes the form of an animal. The second meaning for nagual that is also frequently held across Mesoamerica is a type of witch or sorcerer that is able to transform into animals, usually to inflict harm on one's enemies or rivals. The term nagual still has many more meanings, but they seem to be linked by a set of shared elements on a relationship between the human and animal conditions.

I am focusing on the semantic load, or excess of meaning, that the word nagual carries in contemporary Mesoamerican languages. Part of this research is historical, given the fact that the word was originally converted by Spanish friars in the colonial period according to European concepts of witchcraft and the diabolical. This literal demonization of the nagual still bears its effects today, and I suggest that this is one of the several major shifts in the historical meanings of the word.

In order to refine my research, I am specifically focusing on religious symbolism, discourses on witchcraft, and concepts of healing in contemporary Nahuatl languages in Mexico. In my fieldwork I have found that these concepts are closely connected to images of indigenous peoples, from both the "active" (what indigenes say of themselves) and "passive" (what is said of indigenes) stances, to borrow Clyde Kluckhohn's terms. I received a Fulbright grant to conduct field research in the Huasteca region of northeast Mexico, near the northern region of the Gulf Coast. I conducted the majority of my fieldwork in northern Veracruz, with an emphasis on the rural communities of Nahuatl and N'yuhu (Otomí) speakers. The indigenous languages in this region are Totonac, N'yuhu (Otomí), Teneek (Huasteco), Xi'wiy (Pame), Tepehua, and Nahuatl. The cultural and linguistic mosaic of the Huasteca is in itself an ethnographic feature that I am also pursuing.

FIELDWORK PHOTOS

Research interests:

• Languages, religions, and cultures of Mesoamerica, with particular emphasis on the Yuto-Nawa, Mayan, and Oto-Manguean language groups
• Discourse analysis and social theory, with focus on religion and ethnicity
• Cross-cultural studies on shamanism and witchcraft
• Adaptations of Precolumbian culture into colonial and contemporary Mesoamerica
• Inter-ethnic constructions and relations in the Huasteca region of the northern Gulf Coast of Mexico
• Modes of Native American self-representation through contemporary media (e.g. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner and Smoke Signals)
• Representations of neo-Pagan religion in contemporary media

Recent Professional Work:

• 2005-06 - SUNY Albany Graduate Assistant and web designer for the Institute for Mesoamerican Studies
• May 24 - June 18, 2004 - Course Instructor, AANT 340:
  "Topics in Anthropology: A World History of Magic"
  Course syllabus
  Course bibliography
• 2003-04 - SUNY Albany Graduate Assistant, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies
• 2002-03 - SUNY Albany Teaching Assistant, Cultural Anthropology
• 2001-02 - SUNY Albany Minority Fellow, Department of Anthropology

Publications:

Martín del Campo, Edgar.

• Forthcoming. The Sun and the Moon: A Copala Trique Myth Narrative. IMS Occasional Publication.
• Forthcoming. "Literary Practices in a Nahua New Year Ceremony in Chicontepec, Veracruz." TRACE 50.
• 2005. "An Ethnopoetic Approach to a Copala Triqui Folklore Narrative." In Proceeedings from the Conference on Otomanguean and Oaxacan Languages (COOL), University of California, Berkeley: March 19-21, 2004, pp. 75-86.
• 2003. "También se llaman nanahualtin." Paper presented at the International Colloquium for the Vernacular, Puebla, Mexico: October 8-11, 2003.

Research Awards:

• 2004-05 Fulbright-García Robles Grant for the dissertation project Polysemic Analysis of the Nagual in Post-Colonial Mexican Folklore
• 2004 (Spring) SUNY Albany Graduate Student Organization Travel Grant
• 2004 Institute for Mesoamerican Studies DeCormier Memorial Fellowship
• 2003 Institute for Mesoamerican Studies First Encounter Award
• 2001-02 SUNY Albany Minority Fellowship

• Read, speak, and write English fluently
• Read, speak and write Spanish nearly fluently
• Passed SUNY Albany translation exams for Spanish (2001), German (2002), and French (2004)

Mesoamerican Languages:

• Read, speak, and write Huasteca Nahuatl nearly fluently (San Luis Potosí, Veracruz)
• Read and speak Mexihcah (Classical) Nahuatl at Intermediate level
• Read and speak Ameyaltepec Nahuatl moderately (Guerrero)
• Ongoing independent study in Copala Triqui (Oaxaca)
• Ongoing independent study in Kaqchikel (Guatemala)
• Ongoing fieldwork in Sierra/Eastern Otomí (Hidalgo, Veracruz)
• Upcoming coursework in Teneek (San Luis Potosí, Veracruz)

• The Dictionnaire de la langue Nahuatl Classique (Dictionary of the Classical Nahuatl language), by Alexis Wimmer
• I conducted my fieldwork in the Huasteca under the auspices of the Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas (Zacatecas Institute of Teaching and Research in Ethnology), directed by John Sullivan, Ph.D.
• A map of the languages of Mesoamerica
• A gallery of Yup'ik Inuit masks
• The story of Grandfather Fire Tatewari, as told through Huichol yarn paintings

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