Robert M. Laughlin is an American anthropologist specializing in Meso-American ethnology.
In 1961, he succeeded in cum laude at Princeton University. In 1961, he obtained his Master of Arts in anthropology at Harvard University. In 1963 he obtained a Ph.D. in anthropology at the same university.
Since 1960, Laughlin was associated with the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution), initially at the Bureau of American Ethnology and later at the Department of Anthropology.
Laughlin researches modern and colonial Tzotzil lexicography and Tzotzil oral history, dreams, world views, prayers, ethnobotany and history. Laughlin has done fieldwork with regard to the Mazateken in the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. With regard to the Tzotzil and the Tzeltal, he performed field work in Chiapas.
In 1983, Laughlin was involved in the creation of Sna Jtz'ibajom (= 'The Writer's Home'), a collective of Tzotzil-Tzeltal writers who teach language courses, publish bilingual books and by their Lo'il Maxil (' after-aaptheater ') revives old convictions and deals with current and past economic, social and political issues of the Mayans.
Laughlin is an honorary member of the Maya Educational Foundation. In 2002 he received the Premio Chiapas in Science. In 2004, he received the PEN Gregory Kolovakos Award for translating Latin American literature in English.
Laughlin's work has appeared in Tzotzil, Spanish and English. He is the author of eight books and more than fifty articles in magazines. In 1975 the great Tzotzil dictionary or San Lorenzo Zinacantán appeared, a Totzil dictionary with over 30,000 words declared. Together with John B. Haviland, Laughlin published the great Tzotzil dictionary of Santo Domingo Zinacantán, a dictionary that can be used to decipher Precolumbian, Mayan hieroglyphs. Together with Dennis Breedlove, he published The Flowering of Man in 1993, a Tzotzil Botany or Zinacantán, an ethnobotanic flora containing descriptions of plants and their significance for the Tzotzil. In 2000, this book published a truncated version. Laughlin made a handmade book, Mayan Hearts, and his Spanish version, El diccionario del Corazón (2002). The book deals with a love story using sixth century heart metaphors. The Mexican Ministry of Education pushed a Spanish-language paperback and sent it to the libraries of all high schools in Mexico. Carol Karasik made a selection of Laughlin's published collection of stories and dreams for The People of the Bat: Mayan tales and dreams from Zinacantán that appeared in 1988. In 1996, a reprint published under the title Zinacantán: Dreams and stories from The People of the Bat.
wiki
