About
Barbara Tedlock




Barbara Tedlock, PhD
is a cultural anthropologist as well as a shamanic healer and diviner who was trained and initiated by the K’iche’ Maya of Highland Guatemala. She is on the Board of Directors of the Society for Shamanic Practitioners and is the editor-in-chief of the international magazine, The Journal of Shamanic Practice: Exploring Traditional and Contemporary Shamanism. Barbara is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo where she teaches courses on the Maya and in psychological anthropology and religion, as well as holistic health and integrative medicine. She is also Vice President and President elect of the International Society of Archaeoastronomy and Cultural Astronomy ISACA for 2008-2012.

Barbara's breakthrough book Time and the Highland Maya (1992) is based on her shamanic training and initiation into the naked-eye astronomy and calendar practices of the Maya. Her newest book, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine (2005) won two awards and has been translated into several languages.

Her honors include a Distinguished Professorship (2003), Chancellor’s Research Recognition Award (2002); two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, one from the National Institutes of Health, and another from the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. She has also received Mellon and Fulbright Foundation Fellowships, a Weatherhead Resident Fellowship at the School of American Research, and Senior Research Fellowships from both the American Council of Learned Societies and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.  

She has given slide and power-point lectures about her Mayan research to the members of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC and to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. She has researched, lectured and given workshops about Mayan shamanism to both scholars and the general public in Canada, England, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Russia, Mongolia, China, Nigeria, Kenya, Spain, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Brazil.. She has also given numerous power-point lectures, talks, and experiential workshops in the United States. For a list of some of these see her website http://www.barbaratedlock.com.

Barbara Tedlock's research and writing have been widely discussed in the print media (Christian Science Monitor; Chronicle of Higher Education, Buffalo News, Parabola, Intuition, Santa Fe New Mexican, Albuquerque Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, Alternative Healing, Shaman’s Drum, Archaeology, American Anthropologist, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, American Ethnologist, and Ethos). As a long-term member of the writer’s organization PEN International (New York) she was a featured speaker talking about her work with the Maya at the 2005 Annual Meeting of PEN West. 

Numerous Television and Radio interviews have featured Barbara Tedlock talking about the ancient and living Maya. Her television appearances include two BBC-Television series, “Spirits of the Jaguar” and “Legacy”; Arts & Entertainments “The Unexplained”; NBC-TV Series “Ancient Prophecies”; The History Channel “Mayan Science and Shamanism”; and the ABC-Mini-Series “Mayan Prophecies.” She has also been interviewed on Berkeley’s Public Access Show “Shaman’s Den,” ; CBS and Fox television stations, news Shows in Albuquerque, NBC News in New York City, KGGM-TV in Albuquerque; and WGBH in Boston. Tedlock's insight into the amazing Maya has been heard on numerous radio programs nationwide including interviews on the Conscious Talk and Business Talk Radio Networks. Look for Barbara in the upcoming PBS-Television series, “Breaking the Maya Code”! 

BODY OF WORKS:

-- The Woman in the Shaman's Body : Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine

-- Time and the Highland Maya

-- The Beautiful and the Dangerous: Encounters With the Zuni Indians

-- Kachina dance songs in Zuni society: The role of esthetics in social integration

Barbara Tedlock is also the Editor of:

-- Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations

-- Teachings from the American Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy
(co-editor with Dennis Tedlock)