Faculty Advisory Committee

Associate Professor Cattelino's research focuses on economy, nature, indigeneity, and settler colonialism. She studies and teaches about sociocultural life in the contemporary United States.

I am a linguistic and sociocultural anthropologist, interested in technologies of language circulation, secrecy and (in)visibility, indigeneity and sovereignty, and critical language documentation. My work is concentrated in the Pueblo Southwest and the Mexico-Texas-New Mexico border region.

Native American Literature, 20th Century American Literature, Race and Ethnic Theory

Language and culture, language contact, language and identity, language ideologies, anthropology and verbal art, and the ethnography of communication; American Indian Languages (especially the Kiowa-Tanoan and Uto-Aztecan families); the Pueblo Southwest, Central California.

I explore questions about the socio-cultural dimensions of learning and development in everyday and intergenerational contexts. In one line of work I examine the practices that children and families use to reason and build knowledge about the natural world. I am particularly interested in (1) how families coordinate attention and observation while participating in science activities, (2) how mobility and place structure activity and (3) cultural variability in sensemaking practices such as question-asking and explaining. I also investigate Native American participation in STEM and cultural models of self as related to senses of capability and competence. Across my scholarship, I take a participatory approach and employ a variety of research designs and methods including: community-based design research, cognitive tasks, studies of everyday practices, content analysis, discourse analysis, interaction analysis and video-ethnography. Through my work I aim to answer basic research questions about development, innovate methods, and design teaching and learning tools that contribute to the goals and well-being of Indigenous and non-dominant communities.

Indigenous Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, and Indigenous popular culture.

Stella Nair’s scholarship focuses on the built environment of indigenous communities in the Americas and is shaped by her interests in construction technology, spatial theory, material culture studies, landscape transformations, cross-cultural exchange, and hemispheric networks. Trained as an architect and architectural historian (University of California, Berkeley), Nair has conducted fieldwork in Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States, with ongoing projects in the South Central Andes.

Her research focuses on issues related to indigenous peoples’ rights, with a particular emphasis on cultural property and Native governance.

Her research focuses on issues related to indigenous peoples’ rights, with a particular emphasis on cultural property and Native governance.