Rate My Professor Zoila Mendoza

Her research centers on the music, dance, and festivals of the Peruvian Andes, with a particular emphasis on mestizo ritual performances, sensorial and physical experiences in pilgrimage, and Andean cosmovision. Key publications include Shaping Society through Dance: Mestizo Ritual Performance in the Peruvian Andes (University of Chicago Press, 2000), which examines how dance troupes actively shape social structures during fiestas, and Creating Our Own: Folklore, Performance, and Identity in Cuzco, Peru (Duke University Press, 2008), exploring the development of folkloric arts in early 20th-century Cuzco. In 2021, she published Qoyllur Rit’i: Crónica de una Peregrinación Cusqueña, based on her participation in the Qoyllur Rit'i pilgrimage—a grueling three-day, 85-mile journey ascending from nearly 12,000 to 16,000 feet, undertaken by Quechua-speaking peasants and herders; Mendoza has completed this trek three times. Additional works encompass articles such as "The Musical Walk to Qoyllor Rit'i: The Senses and the Concept of Forgiveness in Cuzco, Peru" (Latin American Music Review, 2017), "Exploring the Andean Sensory Model" (2015), and contributions to dance studies and anthropology of Christianity. She received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010 and a grant from the American Philosophical Society to support her interdisciplinary research on pilgrimage experiences.