School for Advanced Research

Earlier this spring, SAR supporters and guests visited Kathleen Wall’s studio in Jemez Pueblo, where they learned about clay sourcing, forming techniques, and firing processes firsthand. Kathleen shared the different source clays artists work with and guided participants through creating small clay pieces of their own, offering a deeper connection to the materials and traditions behind the work.

Walk the landscapes where history, archaeology, and art intersect.

SAR field trips offer immersive, expert-led journeys across the Southwest, connecting participants to Indigenous histories, cultural landscapes, archaeology, architecture, and community knowledge in ways that go far beyond a typical tour.

Led by scholars, artists, archaeologists, and other experts, these trips open doors to sites, stories, and conversations not usually accessible to the public. From Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde to Bears Ears and beyond, each experience invites participants to engage deeply with the region’s rich and complex heritage.

Along the way, members explore monumental architecture, sacred landscapes, museum collections, contemporary research, and the ongoing connections Indigenous communities maintain with these places today.

Whether you are passionate about archaeology, Native art, history, landscape, or lifelong learning, SAR field trips offer meaningful ways to experience the Southwest through thoughtful dialogue and shared discovery.

Learn more about SAR field trips: https://pulse.ly/tx4hneexpq

RECAP | Scholar Colloquium with N. Fadeke Castor

Scholar, author, and Northeastern University professor N. Fadeke Castor invited audiences into a powerful conversation on spirituality, liberation, kinship, and collective futures.

Drawing from Black feminist ethnography, Indigenous studies, religious studies, and African diaspora traditions, Castor explored the concept of “spiritual marronage” — the creation of intentional spaces of refuge, resistance, healing, and collective care rooted in African Indigenous cosmologies.

Throughout the lecture, Castor reflected on how sacred practice, ancestral relationships, environmental stewardship, and community care can help us imagine futures beyond colonial systems, racial violence, and extraction.

“What would it mean to walk in the world with each other as kin that is always already and has been free?” — N. Fadeke Castor

The talk highlighted the work of the United Maroon Indigenous Peoples movement and explored how spiritual traditions across the African diaspora continue to shape movements for sovereignty, healing, environmental justice, and liberation today.

Castor closed with a moving story connecting Trinidadian spiritual leaders and the Standing Rock water protectors, reminding audiences that spirit, land, and collective care remain deeply intertwined.

Thank you to N. Fadeke Castor and everyone who joined us for this thoughtful and expansive conversation.

Explore upcoming events and lectures: https://pulse.ly/4vsnpafdb0

Tools of the Trade | Object Labeling at IARC

Behind every object in the Indian Arts Research Center collection is a careful system of stewardship designed to protect both the piece itself and the knowledge connected to it.

Every object at the IARC receives an accession number that helps collections staff track its history, cultural information, condition, and movement within the collection.

In these images, 2022–2023 Anne Ray Intern Wayne Nez Gaussoin (Picuris Pueblo, Diné) carefully labels a piece from the jewelry collection using archival materials specifically chosen to be stable, reversible, and non-damaging to the artwork.

At the IARC, collections care is rooted in both stewardship and responsibility, ensuring these works can continue to be studied, cared for, and connected with for generations to come.

Explore the Indian Arts Research Center: https://pulse.ly/inxkjlxrid

Ideas that challenge. Books that endure.

For more than a century, SAR Press has published influential works in anthropology, Indigenous studies, archaeology, history, and the humanities, helping shape conversations across disciplines and communities. Since its first archaeological publications in 1908, SAR Press has released more than 700 titles that continue to transform how we understand culture, place, history, and human experience.

Recent titles explore topics ranging from empire and environmental politics to death practices, ethnography, migration, and Indigenous knowledge systems. Publications from SAR Press emerge from the same spirit of inquiry that defines SAR’s scholar residencies, seminars, and public programs.

Whether you are a scholar, reader, student, or lifelong learner, SAR Press offers books that invite deeper thinking and new perspectives.

Featured titles include:
• Rethinking Empire: Materiality, Metaphysics, and Imperial Politics
• The New Death: Mortality and Death Care in the Twenty-First Century
• Ethnographic Refusals, Unruly Latinidades
• How Nature Works

Browse recently published books: https://pulse.ly/wffobrynxx

What if the story of the border begins with water?

SAR’s podcast, "In Context with School for Advanced Research", asks how the past and present shape one another and why that understanding matters today.

Hosted by Paul Ryer, SAR’s Executive Director of Scholar Programs, the podcast brings together leading scholars in anthropology, archaeology, history, and the humanities for thoughtful, accessible conversations around some of today’s most urgent questions.

In this episode, environmental historian C. J. Alvarez explores how rivers, dams, irrigation systems, roads, and trade routes helped shape the modern U.S.–Mexico border long before walls and surveillance infrastructure came to dominate public conversation.

Together, Paul and C. J. discuss:
• How water infrastructure transformed the borderlands
• The paradox of open trade and closed-border policing
• The environmental impact on the Rio Grande
• Why many modern border “solutions” attempt to fix problems created by earlier systems

“The border has always been open, and the border has always been closed. The only question is, to whom and to what and when?” — C. J. Alvarez

Stream the podcast: https://pulse.ly/qhbacwcq76

From Chaco Canyon to the northern reaches of the Four Corners, SAR members recently spent three days traversing the landscapes and histories that continue to shape our understanding of Ancestral Pueblo societies.

Led by archaeologists Scott Ortman and Robert Weiner, the field trip examined the connections between Chaco Canyon, Aztec Ruins, Yucca House, Wallace Ruin, and other significant sites across the region. Along the way, the study leaders shared insights on the region's connection to religion, social inequality, political power, migration, and cultural transformation across centuries of Pueblo history.

The group walked through monumental Great Houses and reconstructed kivas and discussed astronomical alignments and Chacoan road systems. Conversations throughout the trip reflected the depth and complexity of these places, which remain deeply significant to Pueblo communities today.

Thank you to Scott Ortman and Robert Weiner for guiding such a thoughtful and immersive experience.

Explore upcoming programs: https://pulse.ly/3azxgoh67g

RECAP | Thoughts on Reconsidering Edgar Lee Hewett’s Legacy

Back in April, our partnership series with the New Mexico History Museum came to a close with one last conversation about one of New Mexico’s most influential and complicated cultural figures.

Led by Bruce Bernstein, SAR Senior Scholar and Historic Preservation Officer for the Pueblo de San Ildefonso, the discussion presented Edgar Lee Hewett’s lasting impact on archaeology, museums, preservation, public education, and cultural identity in the Southwest, while also examining the tensions, exclusions, and contradictions embedded within that legacy.

Throughout the talk, Bernstein reflected on the importance of reconsidering how institutions, collections, and public narratives were shaped in the early twentieth century. He highlighted the many Native artists, laborers, educators, and community members whose contributions were often overlooked, while emphasizing the need to engage these histories with honesty, nuance, and accountability.

“People are the consequences of the context of their own lives.” — Bruce Bernstein

Thank you to Bruce Bernstein, the New Mexico History Museum, and everyone who joined us for this thoughtful closing lecture in the series.

Explore upcoming events and lectures: https://pulse.ly/of91vf9dhr

Meet SAR's 2026–2027 Resident Scholar Cohort

This year, SAR welcomes a remarkable new cohort of resident scholars whose work spans anthropology, history, archaeology, Indigenous studies, environmental humanities, linguistics, and art history.

Their research explores questions of sovereignty, climate and environmental change, slavery and emancipation, Indigenous genomics and bioethics, Maya history, food systems, Native art, multispecies relationships, and historical memory across communities and continents.

For more than 50 years, SAR’s Resident Scholar program has offered scholars uninterrupted time, space, and cross-disciplinary exchange to deepen research and develop new ideas. This year’s cohort continues that legacy through projects that challenge assumptions, illuminate overlooked histories, and expand how we understand culture and social change.

The 2026–2027 cohort includes scholars from institutions including UCLA, University of Southern California, UC Berkeley, Princeton University, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Skidmore College, and more.

Read the full announcement: https://pulse.ly/d0l5m0du8c