A Q&A with Fulbright College Honors Program’s Kirstin Erickson

Kirstin Erickson, Ph.D.
Director of the Fulbright College Honors Program

In this conversation, Erickson shares her love of ethnographic fieldwork in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, how much she enjoys mentoring and teaching students, how excited she is to take on directing the college’s honors program, and the fun she has keeping up with her busy family while fitting in time to travel and sing in the choir.

Q: Tell us a little about your research, academic passions and/or role within the college. What excites you about this?

I am a cultural anthropologist, and I direct the Fulbright College Honors Program.

My anthropological research focuses on narrative, identity, memory culture, and popular religion in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands (specifically, in Sonora, Mexico and northern New Mexico). My current research project centers on material culture and notions of heritage in a series of small, historically Hispanic, communities in northern New Mexico.

I am conducting long-term ethnographic fieldwork in these villages in order to better understand modes of self-representation and the ways in which Hispano identity is both understood and continually re-negotiated by those with whom I study.

One key area of interest concerns the folk arts movement. Contemporary “Spanish colonial” folk arts (including saint-carving, tin work, and wool-on-wool colcha embroidery) materialize cultural memory and are used to inscribe identity. I study with New Mexican colcheras in order to understand the limits of the art form and its articulation with understandings of local history.

A second area of inquiry is the role of display in the presentation of Hispano history to tourists and to locals. I study exhibit-making at a small, community-run museum that depicts a particular vision of northern New Mexico’s past. Community museums provide a lens through which to view the politics of representation in light of the need for financial viability.

A third set of questions has to do with performance and the embodiment of memory in local religious celebrations, such as las posadas, an Advent-season tradition. At present, I am writing a book based on my northern New Mexico project.

What excites me most about doing this kind of research are the rich relationships and deep bonds of trust that necessarily develop between the anthropologist and the people with whom she studies.

I have been so fortunate that people have welcomed me into their community and their homes, and have generously shared their thoughts, opinions, and intimate family celebrations with me. Their insights and explanations inevitably lead to those marvelous “ah-hah!” flashes of understanding in which cultural translation begins.

Fieldwork takes a lot of planning, patience, and persistence, but it is extraordinarily rewarding – and it’s fun!

My other passion is teaching. Right after graduating from St. Olaf College, I joined the Peace Corps and served in a junior secondary school in Botswana. It was in the Peace Corps that I discovered my desire to teach.

The classes I offer at the University of Arkansas include “Religion in Latin America,” “Performance, Narrative and Identity,” “Identity and Culture in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands,” and “Museums, Material Culture, and the Popular Imagination,” among others.

I absolutely love being a professor and working with students who are intellectually curious, unafraid to be challenged, and concerned about the world around them.

Q: How long have you been at Fulbright College? What have you enjoyed most about your time here?

I have been a faculty member in Fulbright College for 17 years. That sounds like a long time, but it has gone by so quickly!

I have relished the academic freedom that is afforded faculty members in our college. I am free to pursue whatever research questions I find most compelling, and I can devise and develop my own classes to serve the needs of my department and students. One is only confined by the limits of her own imagination.

But I think what I have enjoyed most about my time in Fulbright College are the many, and varied, teaching and mentoring relationships I’ve developed with my students.

I savor those moments when students seek me out after class to ask questions about a lecture point or to continue a discussion that began in seminar. I love connecting with students on a one-on-one basis, and some of the most enlivening conversations and debates I’ve had have arisen while working with honors students researching their theses, or with doctoral students working on dissertations.

To me, the opportunity for long-term mentoring is the best thing about academia.

Q: What do you most hope your students remember from their classes and/or interactions with you?

What I most hope my students will gain from their experience in my classes is a new (or intensified) confidence in themselves as scholars.

To me, the classroom is more than just a milieu in which to deliver content. I want my courses to give students the means to hone their analytical abilities, challenge them to think critically about every text, assumption, and statement, and help them learn to communicate their ideas clearly and thoughtfully.

I want to instill in my students an appreciation for careful, rigorous scholarship, and I always hope that my teaching conveys even a fraction of the excitement I feel for anthropology and the study of culture.

Q: What do you like to do during your time outside of the university?

I am married and have two daughters, ages 18 and 12, and what I love most is spending time with my family and being supportive of their busy lives (their involvement in choirs, piano, soccer, archery and more).

I have had the travel-bug ever since I went on my first study-abroad program in college; my very favorite cities in the world are Mexico City, Vancouver, Santa Fe, Chicago and Kathmandu.

Yoga helps me relax, as do long walks in my neighborhood. I also love to read and always have a novel or ethnography on my bedside table. I am an indie film devotee and anxiously await the day that Fayetteville gets a theater specializing in screening independent movies.

I enjoy singing (I’m an alto), and I have had the privilege of belonging to several choirs over the past decade, including the U of A Master Chorale and, currently, the adult choir at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. I also love to cook and recently learned how to make a pretty decent pie.

Q: What’s up next on the horizon for you?

My most exciting “next horizon” actually began just last year, when I was appointed to be the Director of Honors Studies in Fulbright College.

It has been a stimulating and profoundly rewarding experience to get to know the honors program and the students we serve.

I love it when the students stop by my office to talk about their latest ideas for thesis research or are seeking a way to connect their research with a planned study-abroad experience.

Fulbright Honors is a well-established program, and I look forward to helping shape its future, in conversation with the members of our Honors Council and with valued colleagues across Fulbright College who serve as thesis directors, vital support staff, professors, and research mentors to our students.