Bookpackers™

BOOKPACKING NEW MEXICO

In 2022, we are launching our first USC Bookpacking class for a non-student audience.

The class will offer participants the opportunity to go bookpacking in the land of enchantment, New Mexico, in the company of USC Professor Andrew Chater.

This week-long experience will combine the joys of academic engagement with the best of boutique travel.

• We will travel in comfort from Santa Fe to Taos to Albuquerque, staying in delightful quality hotels.

• We will read a classic New Mexico novel, ‘Death Comes for the Archbishop’ by Willa Cather, and ‘Night at the Fiestas’, a collection of contemporary short stories by Kirstin Valdez Quade.

• Each morning, we will come together for a stimulating and rigorous seminar, diving deep into historical and cultural context.

• In the afternoons, we will seek out the locations featured in the texts, savoring the fascinating juxtaposition of fact and fiction, past and present, place and people that is the essence of bookpacking.

New Mexico is a glorious location for an experience of this kind. It is a place of historical depth, cultural variety and astonishing natural beauty. Our aim in this class is to absorb the myriad influences of this beguiling literary location, and to touch something of the transcendence that has inspired the writers who have taken this journey before us.

The class can be taken for IACET credit, or purely for pleasure.

DATES

Saturday 5th to Saturday 12th November, 2022

ENROLLMENT

The class will be marketed primarily at USC parents and alumni, but is open to all.

Enrollment will be capped at 12 participants, to ensure an intimate experience and to maximize contact time with your host and Bookpacker guide, Professor Andrew Chater.

Enrollment is first come, first served, secured on payment of a non-refundable deposit.

The bookings window will open in December, 2021 To make a booking, please visit the dedicated USC Dornsife web portal at bookpackers.usc.edu

PRICE

$6000 per person, to include -

• An 8 night / 7 day academic class and exclusive travel experience with daily seminars and excursions

• Comfortable accommodation in some of New Mexico’s most celebrated boutique hotels

• Breakfast included, plus 2 packed lunches and 3 group dinners

• Pick up and drop off at Albuquerque airport, and all transportation within New Mexico, traveling in comfort in a 15-seater Mercedes Sprinter

Price not including -

• Fights to and from Albuquerque, NM

• Travel insurance

Reduced rates are available for room share, and for ‘early bird’ enrollment within the month of January 2022.

COVID-19 POLICY

We are launching this new class in the presumption that it will be safe to travel by June 2022 - but we will be reviewing all arrangements in the months before departure to reflect Covid realities at that point.

In the unfortunate event that USC Dornsife decides to cancel this class, all deposits and fees received at that point will be repaid.

REQUIRED READING

All participants in the class must commit to reading our two core texts, ‘Death Comes for the Archbishop’ and ‘Night at the Fiestas’.

Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather (1927) - 297pp

• Willa Cather is known as a novelist of the Plains, but she traveled extensively in New Mexico, and her historical novel ‘Death Comes for the Archbishop’ is a love letter to the history and culture of this extraordinary region.

• Published in 1927, the novel covers the period from 1846 to the late 1880s, and it tells the story of a young French priest, Jean Maria Latour, sent to New Mexico in the months after the Annexation. The novel describes Latour’s attempts to navigate Anglo, Hispanic and Native American interests, whilst staying true to his core humanity and Catholic beliefs. It’s a lyrical and deeply humane novel, written by an American woman aware of her own ‘outsider’ status in this heady and culturally complex world.

• There is a particular pleasure in reading novels in the place where they are set. We recommend reading two-thirds of ‘Death Comes for the Archbishop’ before the class begins, saving at least the final third to read in Santa Fe. We will explore the city through Cather’s eyes, seeking out the sources of her inspiration, and visiting the locations she so lovingly describes.

  
  

Night at the Fiestas - Kirstin Valdez Quade (2012) - 275pp

• Six of the ten stories in ‘Night at the Fiesta’ are set in New Mexico, and we will discuss them sequentially in our daily seminars over the course of the class.

• Quade is a brilliant writer. In the stories in this collection, she describes the lives of various contemporary New Mexican characters with visceral skill and psychological truth. Her characters are complex and flawed. The stories don’t go where we expect them to; they are are as unpredictable and quirky as life itself.

• Quade’s New Mexico makes for a fascinating juxtaposition with Cather’s more romanticized world. Quade tackles faith and folklore - but she also forces us to confront New Mexico as it exists now for those living in dusty towns off the tourist trail. She writes about race and poverty and unfulfilled yearnings. poverty and race and the exploitation of people and resources.

• Quade has just published one of the stories, ‘The Four Wounds’, in extended form as a 400 page novel (2021). You may choose to read this more fleshed-out story on your return from the class.
  
  
  

SUPPLEMENTARY TEXTS

In our seminars, we will discuss a range of novels set in New Mexico. Andrew’s passion for literature is infectious, and he’ll dig into a range of material for context and comparison. In the weeks following the class, you may wish to sample and savor some of these books for yourself.

If taking the class ‘for credit’, students will be expected to read at least one of these supplemental novels -

Bless Me, Ultima - Rudolfo Anaya (1972) - 262pp

• The great Chicano author Rudolfo Anaya was was raised in Santa Rosa, new Mexico, in the 1940s. ‘Bless Me, Ultima’ is a New Mexican classic, a childhood memoir, describing a boy’s relationship with his Ultima, a ‘wise woman’ who takes him under her wing. Anaya’s intention in writing the book was to bring together the Hispanic and the Indigenous traditions, fusing these two strands into something new. Reading the novel is a wonderful way to explore the uniquely syncretic nature of New Mexican culture.

Ceremony - Leslie Marmon Silko (1977) - 262pp

• ‘Ceremony’ tells the powerful story of a traumatized veteran who returns from the Pacific War and attempts to re-assimilate into life on a Native American Reservation. It’s a bold, often very funny novel capturing brilliantly the Native American tussle between tradition and modernity. The novel is set on Laguna Pueblo, west of Albuquerque, a location we will visit on the final day of the class.

The Milagro Beanfield War - John Nichols (1974) - 445pp

• John Nichols’ rumbustious ‘70s classic describes a beleaguered Chicano community in the hills of northern New Mexico defending their town against the forces of corporate development. This comic novel is very much of its time, and not all of it has dated well - but it skewers brilliantly the environmental battles that were coming to the fore in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and the way these battles over resources in the desert southwest so often intersect with questions of ethnicity.

  
  
  

TAKING THE CLASS ‘FOR CREDIT’

This class can be taken for pleasure, or for credit.

If taking the class for pleasure, all that is expected is that you read the two core texts, join the seminars and the expeditions, and participate in all the intellectual pleasures of the class.

If taking the class for credit, more will be expected. To achieve 2-unit IACET accreditation, students must -

• Read the core texts and participate actively in all seminars and expeditions.

• Write a paper on the experience of bookpacking ’Death Comes for the Archbishop’.

• Read one of the three supplementary novels, and write a paper describing how well your chosen novel succeeds as a ‘novel of place’ - in other words, how well it conveys a sense of regional geography, culture and identity.

The two pieces of written work should each be 1500 to 2000 words in length (roughly 5 to 6 pages, double spaced), and delivered in Pdf format by email within four weeks of our return from New Mexico.

The schedule that follows is provisional - we will be adjusting the final details up to the point of launch. But what follows will give a good sense of the richly immersive, culturally stimulating and academically rigorous pleasures in store.

Day 01 - Arrival

• Arrive Albuquerque Airport. Shuttle to Santa Fe; check into La Fonda Hotel.

• Group dinner and introductory talk: Willa Cather’s Santa Fe.

Days 02 & 03 - ‘Bookpacking’ in Historic Santa Fe

• Our morning seminars on these first two days will focus on colonial Hispanic history and the period of the Anglo Annexation - the context of ‘Death Comes for the Archbishop’. We will dissect Willa Cather’s inspirations and study her historical sources. We will discuss her representation of Hispanic attributes and character - and compare these with the portrait of Latina life presented in Quade’s short stories, particularly ‘Nemecia’ and ‘The Five Wounds’.

• We will follow the story of Santa Fe into the early 20th century, when Cather herself came to Santa Fe and stayed at La Fonda. This was the era in which the city developed its reputation as an artistic and bohemian enclave - a phenomenon explored in Quade’s titular short story ‘Night at the Fiestas’. We’ll ask ourselves what it was that drew artists and writers to this particular dusty town in America’s high desert.

• In our afternoons, we will take in the sights and sounds of Santa Fe. We’ll visit the Palace of the Governors, built by the Spanish in 1607 - the oldest continuously occupied public building in the US. We’ll visit the Bishop’s Lodge, the home of Jean-Baptiste Lamy, the real-life prototype of Cather’s fictional hero Latour - and we’ll admire his Cathedral, a lovely piece of Romanesque in soft yellow sandstone that complements the adobe buildings all around. We’ll walk the streets and take in the independent galleries and shops. We’ll sit in cafes and soak up the atmosphere - and we’ll read, delighting in the pleasure of absorbing Cather’s exquisite and life-affirming prose in such a perfect setting.

Day 04 - Chimayo - Faith and Folklore

• On this day we will check out of La Fonda and head north to Taos.

• Our morning seminar on this day will dig deeper into the nature of New Mexican faith and folklore. We’ll look at representations of Catholic faith in Quade’s stories - particularly ‘The Five Wounds’ and ‘Ordinary Sins’. And we’ll discuss the nature of the syncretic - the merging of Catholic with Native American beliefs, celebrated in the works of Chicano authors Rudolfo Anaya and Sandra Cisneros. We’ll revisit early Hispanic history to see how this syncretic tradition first evolved, and how fundamental it is to an understanding of New Mexican heritage and contemporary identity.

• En route to Taos, we’ll visit a location that will bring our morning discussion into vivid focus - The Sanctuary of Chimayo. This shrine, dating from the early 19th century, remains a place of contemporary pilgrimage.

• Group dinner.

Days 05 & 06 - Transcendent Taos

• For the next two nights we will be staying in a very special ‘Bookpacker’ location - the Mabel Dodge Luhan Lodge, outside Taos. In the 1920s, the remarkable Mabel Dodge Luhan founded a literary colony in Taos. Willa Cather lived at the Lodge for a while, as did Robinson Jeffers, Georgia O’Keeffe and Aldous Huxley. Most famously, Luhan invited D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda to join this Taos set; we’ll visit the ranch Luhan gave Frieda in exchange for the manuscript of ‘Sons and Lovers’, where D.H. Lawrence wrote much of his later fiction.

• We’ll explore the story of this 1920s bohemian world. We’ll study Quade’s short story ‘Canute Commands the Waves’, which taps into the nature of New Mexico as a place of artistic reclusion, and which echoes similar stories (‘St. Mawr’ and ‘The Woman Who Rode Away’) written by D.H. Lawrence.

• We’ll visit Taos and Taos Pueblo - and we’ll head into the hills and valleys of Northern New Mexico - sacred spaces where artists and indigenous peoples alike have communed with the natural and the supernatural, experiencing visions both visceral and life-affirming.

  
  

Day 07 & 08 - Albuquerque and Acoma Pueblo

• The final part of the class will focus on New Mexico’s Native American cultures.

• We will stay at the Los Poblanos Historic Inn in Albuquerque. From here, we’ll visit Isleta, Laguna and Acoma, the three Native American ‘Pueblos’ visited by Cather’s fictional protagonist Bishop Latour in the glorious, central sequence in ‘Death Comes for the Archbishop’.

• ‘Pueblos’ - literally ‘villages’ - signify settled (as opposed to nomadic) cultures, and the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico have lived in these places for hundreds of years. Acoma, sitting atop a mesa in the desert west of Albuquerque, has witnessed continuous human settlement for longer than any place in the USA. Visiting Acoma is a rare and unforgettable privilege.

• Our seminars will focus on literary representations of Native cultures, in the worls of Willa Cather and others, and we’ll explore the fiction of Leslie Marmon Silko, whose novel ‘Ceremony’ is set on Laguna Pueblo, just north of Acoma.

• We will celebrate a final group dinner, and a final reflective seminar - and then we’ll depart for Albuquerque airport, and the journey home.