Paul Eiss Bio

Paul Eiss is a graduate of the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan, whose research is based upon ethnographic and archival research in Mexico. In his dissertation and recent publications, Eiss explores such topics as: the politics of labor, land tenure and ethnicity; popular religion; indigenous education; value; and archives and historical memory. His book manuscript (In the Name of the Pueblo: Possession, Sovereignty and History in Yucatan) is an anthropology and history of the emergence and transformation of "el pueblo", as a political, material and spiritual entity, from the eighteenth century to the present. Eiss has explored this topic through extensive periods of archival research in Yucatan, Mexico City, and Spain, and ethnographic fieldwork in the Hunucma district of northwestern Yucatan, Mexico, among Maya and Spanish speaking inhabitants of pueblos and ex-haciendas. Eiss recently was awarded a National Academy of Education-Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship for a project on indigenous education, as well as the Society for Cultural Anthropology's "Cultural Horizons" prize, for his article, "Hunting for the Virgin."

	*Paul Eiss, Associate Professor of Anthropology and History*
	Paul Eiss is a graduate of the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan, whose research is based upon ethnographic and archival research in Mexico. In his dissertation and recent publications, Eiss explores such topics as: the politics of labor, land tenure and ethnicity; popular religion; indigenous education; value; and archives and historical memory. His book manuscript (In the Name of the Pueblo: Possession, Sovereignty and History in Yucatan) is an anthropology and history of the emergence and transformation of "el pueblo", as a political, material and spiritual entity, from the eighteenth century to the present. Eiss has explored this topic through extensive periods of archival research in Yucatan, Mexico City, and Spain, and ethnographic fieldwork in the Hunucma district of northwestern Yucatan, Mexico, among Maya and Spanish speaking inhabitants of pueblos and ex-haciendas. Eiss recently was awarded a National Academy of Education-Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship for a project on indigenous education, as well as the Society for Cultural Anthropology's "Cultural Horizons" prize, for his article, "Hunting for the Virgin."