NEWS

The importance of tradition in Maya village life will be the focus as “The Maya and the World” lecture series continues, presented by Louisiana Tech and the Lincoln Parish Library.

Anthropologist Grace Lloyd Bascopé is scheduled to make two public presentations:

• “Contemporary Recycling: Uses of Ancient Tools by Modern Maya” at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22 at the Lincoln Parish Library

• “Threads of the Past Enrich the Present: The Maya Then and Now” at 9:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 23 in Wyly Tower Auditorium on Tech’s campus.

Both events are free and open to the public.

An internationally recognized anthropologist, Grace Lloyd Bascopé completed her undergraduate studies at Baylor University. She holds a master’s degree in social work from the University of Texas and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Southern Methodist University. Bascopé has taught at the Southwestern Medical School, in the Dallas County Community College District and, most recently, at Texas Christian University. She currently serves as a project director for the Maya Research Program of Fort Worth, Texas.

Bascopé has conducted fieldwork in Mexico, Honduras, South America, Jamaica and the United States. For nearly 20 years she has been studying tradition and change in the Maya community of Yaxunah in Yucatan, Mexico.

In her presentations, Bascopé will discuss life in Yaxunah and the impact there and in similar communities of modernization and globalization. She will focus on customs, activities and beliefs that are rooted in the distant past, but that are being reinterpreted as villagers rethink what it means to be Maya.

Other speakers scheduled in “The Maya and the World” series are historian Monica Bontty and geographer W. George Lovell.

A complete schedule of events is available by clicking HERE.

“The Maya and the World” is sponsored by Tech and the Lincoln Parish Library, with major funding from the Louisiana Board of Regents Support Fund and additional funding from the College of Liberal Arts, the department of history, the department of social sciences and the School of Literature and Language. Event support is provided by the student members of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society, and Sigma Delta Pi, the national collegiate Hispanic honor society.

Written by Judith Roberts