Kendall Lovely, Native American Studies

Name:

Kendall Lovely

Title:

Assistant Professor and Curator of Historic and Contemporary Indigenous Collections, Maxwell Museum

Department:

Native American Studies

Describe your research in about 200 words.

I am an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and public historian. I am bringing my interdisciplinary background in comparative literary study, cultural anthropology, and museum studies into a joint role as Assistant Professor of Native American Studies and Curator of Historic and Contemporary Indigenous Collections at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at UNM. My current book project is an adaptation of my recently completed dissertation, From Southwest Native American Lands to Ancient Mediterranean Waters: (Re)-Storying Late Nineteenth-Early Twentieth Century Museum Anthropology for Indigenous Ancestral Futures. This research pays attention to the history of museum anthropology and collecting of Diné (Navajo) and Pueblo materials toward the development of Native arts and heritage spaces in New Mexico. Beyond this history, my project seeks to connect Indigenous material culture to forms of meaning- and memory-making outside of colonial frameworks. Environmental humanities, feminist, queer, and disability studies, as well as Indigenous studies, approaches inform this work.

What’s the most interesting thing you have learned from a student?

As I’ve learned from many students, enabling learning in flexible formats for diverse learning types, backgrounds, and skills fosters a variety of passion-driven engagements.