Academic and Professional Portfolio

Posts tagged “Geneaology

Ethnography & Oral History

My project-thesis “Choctaw-Apache Foodways” depends on ethnographic fieldwork and oral history among the Choctaw-Apache of Ebarb community.

Gourds drying

Pepper Soup and Biscuits

Mr. Dick Sepulvado making tamales

I have written short, unpublished ethnographic papers on the following:

– Czech Cowboy culture

-Archaeologists and their relationship to the descendants of the people they study

-Native born American Buddhists

-Islamophobia in France, U.K., and Germany: What about the Czech Republic?

-French Market of New Orleans: A case of Continuity or Adaptive Reuse?

-Theravada Buddhism and Ethnic Identity in Texas

My hope is to continue researching the intersections of food and culture. I plan on writing a short article on the Zwolle Tamale Fiesta and ethnic identity in Sabine Parish. I have a research plan on a book on the relationship between grits and culture in the U.S. South, tentatively entitled, “How d’ you take your grits?”

I follow the ethical standards of the American Anthropology Association requiring informed consent, and the practices embodied in the Principles and Best Practices of the Oral History Association and the follow University requirements for Oral History under Human Subjects Institutional Review Board.


Rediscovering old connections: Nacogdoches, Tx

A Summer 2010 trip to Nacogdoches to do research on descendants of Los Adaes brought me to the East Texas Research Center where I met with Peggy Jasso, a Texas genealogist specializing in old Spanish and mestizo families.I searched land records and poured through old Spanish documents translated in the E.B. Blake Collection.

 

I visited  rural communities and a number the older cemeteries.  In the course of visiting these communities with Dr. George Avery, an archaeologist at Stephen F. Austin University, we had the pleasure of meeting good contacts for follow up ethnographic fieldwork regarding life along the old  El Camino Real. Dr. Avery introduced me to the pre-historic and historic archaeology of the area. Before returning home, I  saw Old Stone Fort, Mission Delores and stopped for inspiration at  El Lobanillo, the site of Gil Ybarbo’s ranch on the Texas side of the Sabine River.