ASU doctoral candidate and McNair scholar Diana Meneses focuses on Native American history and culture

Originally from La Paz, Bolivia, Diana Meneses grew up in San Antonio, Texas, where she received her B.A. in History and English in 2002 from the University of the Incarnate Word. As a doctoral candidate in History at ASU, she focuses on U.S. history, particularly contemporary history and arts and culture of 20th-century Native American communities.

As an undergraduate, Meneses was awarded a McNair Scholarship. The McNair Program is designed to assist talented undergraduate students from first generation families and/or underrepresented groups to enter graduate programs that lead to doctoral degrees. “The McNair program proved absolutely invaluable in preparing me for graduate school,” she says. “It was one of the best opportunities I could have received.”

In graduate school, Diana’s attention turned to contemporary Native American history and culture. “Studying history seemed to be the best way I could combine my diverse interests and also research and understand more about Native peoples. I am very lucky I ended up at ASU in one of the top programs in the nation, studying under one of the foremost historians for Native American contemporary history, Dr. Peter Iverson.” Dr. Iverson was named Outstanding Doctoral Mentor 2003 by the Graduate College.

Her studies of Latin American indigenous peoples resulted in her receiving the Department of Education’s Foreign Language and Areas Studies (FLAS) Award for 2005-2006 to study the indigenous language, Kichwa (Quichua) at ASU with Luz Maria de la Torre. She received a second FLAS Fellowship for the summer of 2006 to do further intensive study of Kichwa language and culture in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Other awards include The Charles Redd Center Award for Western Studies (2004) for her research on hoop dancing and the Albuquerque Convention and Visitors Bureau Award for Southwestern Culture (2005) for her paper on two Arizona basket weavers. For 2005-2006 she was a recipient of the Ocampo-Quesada Research Scholarship from the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at ASU to pursue an oral history project with a Chicano in San Antonio.

Diana does interdisciplinary Spanish-language work for an NSF project of the ASU Department of Geography as well as work for ASU’s School of Social and Family Dynamics. She also continues to study ballet in ASU’s Department of Dance.

After completing her Master’s in History at ASU in 2004, focusing on the history of basketry among Arizona Native communities, Diana is now writing her Ph.D. dissertation, a history of the Ak-Chin Indian Community.

In Summer 2006, she had the opportunity to present her paper on the Ak-Chin Him-Dak Eco-Museum at the Maple Leaf and Eagle Conference on North American Studies in Helsinki, Finland.

“I hope that all my studies and experiences can be applied to my future as a teacher and researcher. I enjoy working with students, and teaching will remain my main career goal. However, personally and academically, I feel the contemporary history of Native and/or Hispanic peoples in North and South America is of value and worthy of my continued research. I strongly believe in history’s importance and hope that I can impart that same belief to my students.”

Top Right: Diana Meneses in Ecuador
Middle Left: Diana Meneses with Matt Makley (left) and Dr. Peter Iverson (center) at the Maple Leaf and Eagle Conference on North American Studies in Helsinki, Finland
Bottom Left: Photo of Diana Meneses by her brother, Ned Meneses.