Rate My Professor Keith Basso

Keith Basso was Regents Professor and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, where he served from 1989 until his retirement in 2006. He earned his B.A. in Anthropology from Harvard University in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1967, with his dissertation on Western Apache witchcraft published as Western Apache Witchcraft in 1969. Prior to UNM, Basso taught at Yale University and the University of Arizona. His career included contributions to Native American affairs, serving on the board of the National Museum of the American Indian from 1992 to 1995, consulting on NAGPRA repatriation claims from museums, acting as an expert witness in Western Apache land and rights cases, and assisting Apache elder Eva Tulene Watt with her life history book Don’t Let the Sun Step Over You: A White Mountain Apache Family Life, 1860-1975 (University of Arizona Press, 2004).

Basso's research focused on Western Apache history, language, and culture, addressing linguistic acculturation, classificatory verb systems, silence as a communicative act, metaphor and semantic theory, linguistic play and cultural symbols, place-name hierarchies, storytelling through place names, and senses of place in landscape and language. Major publications include The Cibecue Apache (1970), Portraits of 'The Whiteman': Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols among the Western Apache (1979), and Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache (University of New Mexico Press, 1996), which received the Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction (1996), the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing (1997), and the School of American Research J.I. Staley Prize (2001). He also edited Apachean Culture History (1971, with Morris Opler), Meaning in Anthropology (1976, with Henry Selby), and Senses of Place (1996, with Steven Feld). Basso's linguistic ethnography integrated language and cultural studies, advanced indigenous advocacy, and influenced understandings of environmental philosophies and place-based moral narratives. He passed away on August 4, 2013.