Saturday, December 2, 2017
10:30 a.m. (prompt!)  Program begins 
*** RESERVATIONS ARE REQUIRED, INFO BELOW
Weaving Generations Together:
Evolving Creativity in the Maya of Chiapas
with
Patricia Greenfield
Distinguished Professor of Psychology, UCLA

      For centuries, the Zinacantec Maya women of Chiapas, Mexico have woven and embroidered clothing that expresses their values and embodies their roles as mothers and daughters.  In the summers of 1969 and 1970, Patricia Greenfield traveled to Chiapas to study the women and the art they produce.  Professor Greenfield is the curator of an eponymous exhibition at UCLA’s Powell Library, which displays colorful hand-woven clothing from the region and provides insights and information about the Mayan people.  In her research, Greenfield addresses a wide range of issues, including how children are socialized, the effects of globalization, how growing entrepreneurship affected weaving and the teaching of weaving, the role of creativity, and verbal and nonverbal communication.  Greenfield and her photographer daughter documented a culture in transition, and the village’s rapid pace of social change made it an ideal laboratory for studying how social change alters human development — specifically, learning and creativity.

     Patricia Greenfield received her Ph. D. from Harvard University and is currently Distinguished Professor of Psychology at UCLA, where she is a member of the Developmental Psychology group.  Her central theoretical and research interest is in the relationship between culture and human development, and she has received many prestigious academic awards.  Her books include Mind and Media: The Effects of Television, Video Games, and Computers (Harvard, 1984) and many others.  With a focus on social change and human development, she has studied three generations of child development and socialization in a Maya community in Chiapas, Mexico between 1969 and 2012.