Department of Anthropology Staff
Robert M. Laughlin
Curator Emeritus of
Mesoamerican Ethnology
Title:
Robert M. Laughlin, Ph.D.
Phone: 202-633-1931
Fax: 202-357-2208
E-mail:
laughlir@si.edu
Mailing Address:
Smithsonian Institution
NMNH MRC 112
P.O. Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012
USA
Courier Delivery Address:
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of Natural History
10th and Constitution Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20560-0112
Position and Responsibilities:
Bob Laughlin is a Mesoamerican ethnologist, who began his career first in the Bureau of American Ethnology and then in the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution since 1960.
Education and Professional Activities:
Bob Laughlin graduated cum laude in English from Princeton University, followed by an MA. in 1961 and a PhD. in anthropology in 1963 from Harvard University. His field work in Mexico has focused on the Mazatec in Oaxaca and Veracruz states and the Tzotzil and Tzeltal Maya in Chiapas. In 1983 he helped found Sna Jtz’ibajom, The House of the Writer, a Tzotzil-Tzeltal writers’ cooperative, based in San Cristóbal de las Casas, that gives courses in native literacy, publishes bilingual books, and through its Lo’il Maxil, Monkey Business Theatre, revives ancient beliefs, and copes with recent and present economic, social and political problems that confront the Maya. He is an Honorary Member of the Maya Educational Foundation. He received the Premio Chiapas in Science in 2002 and the PEN Gregory Kolovakos Award for the translation of Spanish (including native American) literature in 2004.
Major Research Interests:
His major research interest is in modern and colonial Tzotzil lexicography, Tzotzil oral history, worldview, dreams, prayers, ethnobotany and history. As a pioneer in advocacy anthropology he has sought to give a voice to the Chiapas Mayas, and has seen to it that a majority of his work has been published in Tzotzil and Spanish, as well as in English.
Selected Publications:
Dr. Laughlin is the author of over 50 articles, and eight books. His The great Tzotzil dictionary of San Lorenzo Zinacantán, published in 1975, with 30,000 entries, was the most comprehensive dictionary of a native American language. Selections from his published collections of tales and dreams were made by Carol Karasik for The people of the bat: Mayan tales and dreams from Zinacantán (1988), reprinted in 1996 as Mayan tales from Zinacantán: Dreams and stories from The People of the Bat. Together with John B. Haviland, Dr. Laughlin published The great Tzotzil dictionary of Santo Domingo Zinacantán, a sixteenth dictionary that has proved to be of great use to epigraphers deciphering pre-Columbian Mayan hieroglyphs. With Dennis E. Breedlove, he is the author of The flowering of man: a Tzotzil botany of Zinacantán (1993). An abridged edition appeared in 2000. He created a handmade book, Mayan Hearts, with its Spanish edition, El diccionario del corazón (2002), which is a love story using 16th century Tzotzil heart metaphors. The Mexican Department of Education has printed a paperback of the latter and distributed it to the libraries of every middle school of Mexico. Dr. Laughlin translated and reviewed historically the longest existing colonial Tzotzil document, an 1812 proclamation by the Spanish government, exhorting the colonists not to join Napoleon – Beware the great horned serpent: Chiapas under the threat of Napoleon (2003). A Spanish edition of the San Lorenzo dictionary, including plant names from The flowering of man, has just appeared. This dictionary of what has become “grandfather Tzotzil,” is being offered by the Mexican government at less than $5. so that it can reach the Mayan population.
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