Elayne Zorn, In Memoriam

 Elayne Zorn, 1952-2010 (PhD Cornell 1997, M.A. Cornell 1987, M.A. U Texas-Austin 1983, B.A. California College of the Arts 1975)

Prof. Elayne Zorn left us on June 15th, 2010.  She was Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of Central Florida, where she worked between 2007 and 2010.  A highly respected weaving artist, musician and anthropologist, she specialized in the study of textiles, of tourism and of cultural change in the Andes.

She was born on February 3, 1952 in the city of New York.  There, she attended Hunter College High School and Barnard College.  She received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1975.  She then went to Peru to conduct research on Taquile Island in Puno during 1975-1977, and then worked at the Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore in La paz, Bolivia, in 1975-1997.  She did further fieldwork in Taquile and Puno in 1981, and received her M.A. in Latin American Studies from the Institute of Latin American Studies of the University of Texas, Austin, in 1983.

She resumed graduate studies in 1985, at Cornell University, where she received an M.A. in Anthropology in 1987 and then a Ph.D. also in anthropology in 1997.  At Cornell she worked under the supervision of Prof. Billie Jean Isbell.  She conducted fieldwork in Potosi, Northern Bolivia, for her PhD dissertation.

Prof. Zorn consistently received teaching and teaching-related awards at the University of Central Florida, and was instrumental in the creation of the graduate program in anthropology there.

Her book Weaving a Future: Tourism, Cloth, and Culture on an Andean Island (U of Iowa Press 2004) was an important landmark in Andean studies, as it brought together a careful analysis of textile traditions and an informed understanding of global change.

She was also involved in service to anthropology, including her work as part of the board of the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, first as co-editor of the SLAA AAA conference program, in 2000, and then between 2006 and 2009 as Treasurer of the Society for Latin America Anthropology (SLAA). In 2007 SLAA  officially became the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology while she was an executive officer of the board.

She was a renowned musician, who played the charango and the Bolivian mandolin in different regional tunings, and sang in several Andean languages.  She performed in Andean towns and cities, with her former husband Juan Cutipa Colque, of Puno.  She was also a respected weaver, who stayed in close touch with Andean artists both in the Andes and the United States.

Elayne Zorn's expertise in the field of computer design and digital technologies in general was constant throughout much of her life.  She worked in New York City as a typesetter and computer graphics specialist in New York City, between 1981 and 1985.  In 1991-1992 she was a Leverhulme research fellow at the University of Liverpool, in the U.K., where she co-designed, programmed and produced a videodisk on Andean life and society.   She became Associate Director of the Digital Ethnography Lab at the UCF anthropology department in 2007.

She is survived by her mother, Sandra Gordon of Winter Park, Florida, and her son, Gavriel Cutipa-Zorn.

Prof. Elayne Zorn will always be remembered as a respectful, engaged and kind scholar and friend who always gave the best she had to offer to her family, her community, her colleagues, her students and her friends.

Text by Gabriela Vargas-Cetina, prepared with the help of Frederic Gleach, Kenna Noone and Heather Levy.