50 Years of Change and Fieldwork: Dr. Cindy Lee Hull conducted her doctoral research in Yaxkukul in 1976-77, where she investigated economic and cultural changes brought about by the decline of the henequen industry. She wrote an ethnography, Katun: A Twenty-Year Journey with the Maya (Wadsworth, 2004) after many return research trips after 1976. 

Cindy and her husband have been back and forth to the Merida area since 1971, as a student, and regularly since completing her doctorate and teaching over twenty years at Grand Valley State University in MIchigan. She will discuss 50 years of changes and experiences, along with visuals of life in a rural community over the years.

Katun: A Twenty-Year Journey with the Maya is part of MEL’s permanent lending collection, as are two works of her detective fiction - Human Sacrifice: A Mystery Novel, which explores two mysterious deaths at a gathering of Maya scholars in Mérida, and Culture Shock : A Claire Aguila Mystery. She was featured in the MEL’s Author Spotlight series.