- Staffulty Highlight
Dr. Erin Zavitz, Bosque School’s Upper School Humanities Department leader, is characterized by intellectual curiosity, organizational talent, and a keen interest in collaborative work. She teaches Humanities 10, Special Topics courses, and most recently, the New Mexico State History course. She also serves as the Model UN faculty sponsor. She is a committed runner and a busy mom, and she is still engaged in researching and publishing on topics related to her academic area of expertise, Haiti. We are fortunate to have such an accomplished scholar inspiring our students in the Humanities.
Outside of school, how do you like to spend your free time? Any hobbies or interests you'd like to share?
I’m a long-distance runner, and it is my happy place to go think and disconnect. I have run competitively as a Division III athlete in cross country and track, but I also ran with the University of Aberdeen team during a semester abroad, and I ran two international half marathons, one in France and one in Switzerland.
Share a brief overview of your educational and professional journey that led you to Bosque School.
I’m from Albuquerque and left the state to attend a small liberal arts college in the Midwest, where I majored in history. I’d always had in the back of my head that I’d be an educator, but my trajectory, starting with college and beyond, also led me into research and writing. I got to travel to Haiti during a college immersive term with a professor, and despite already having some understanding of its history and culture, I was blown away by the rich history and fascinating position of Haiti in the African diaspora. After college, I did a year with Americorps doing reading and math intervention at a middle school in Rio Rancho, then started my master’s at UNM in comparative literature and cultural studies, examining how Haitian novels commemorate Haitian history. Those studies made me realize there were many unanswered questions, so I took the next step—a Ph.D. program at the University of Florida in Latin American and Caribbean history. That’s where I fully explored the memories of the Haitian revolution, which was the second major revolution leading to an independent state in the Americas and the only modern successful slave revolt. Coming out of that, I hoped to become a professor and got a job at a small university in Montana, where I spent three years. I found it a little isolating and not as rewarding professionally as I had hoped, so in 2018, I returned to New Mexico to join the Bosque School staffulty.
Over the last six and a half years, I’ve learned to appreciate the insightful and creative students that I get to work with and the ability to design a curriculum that explores literature, culture, people, and histories that are not in the traditional English or History class. There’s a collegial engagement here that is quite valuable and not found everywhere. Over the course of time, I’ve taught in the previous English and History departments, and I am now leading and teaching in the newly created Humanities department. We acknowledge the vision of previous colleagues to create this department, and now we are building on that vision as we help our students develop key skills and use an interdisciplinary lens that helps define and explore the human experience in more depth and breadth.
What's one of your favorite memories or moments from your time at Bosque School so far?
I was here during COVID, and students attended on alternate days. I ate lunch with half of my advisees on any given day. It was an amazing opportunity to let our barriers down and get to know each other. We had assigned seating spots, and our group schemed to get a better set of spots. While there was so much stress around that time, I’ll never again have the opportunity to sit over a period of months with such a small group of students and chat and joke together.
Do you have any ongoing research, personal projects, or creative endeavors that you're passionate about and would like to share?
My background is as a scholar, and I envision myself as a university professor and that’s how I was trained. So, I’m continuing to research and publish on how Haitians remember the Haitian revolution. I have previously written on the development of 19th century Haiti from a political and cultural lens, and the forthcoming piece, out next year, is on more recent commemorations of Haitian national heroes, particularly the manipulation of the memory of Haiti’s founder Jean Jacque Dessaline, who is put forth as a figure both to fight government corruption but also to justify the existing leader’s position. He has become a full myth and is used by all sides. Doing this work helped inform my teaching of a Special Topics class on Haiti during the 2022-23 school year. Then, in turn, the student discussions helped me shape and clarify my ideas. It’s really a pleasure to share the research process with students, allowing them to see teachers modeling the scholarship and research they are learning to do themselves. Finding sources, coming up with research questions, synthesizing sources, and conducting fieldwork are the cornerstones of the Capstone Program, so it’s wonderful when teachers have direct experience with these processes.
If you could give one piece of advice to your students, what would it be?
I would encourage my students to follow their passions and unanswered questions but also not to close the door to experiences that might not spark their interest right away because such experiences and topics might ultimately connect them to future opportunities that they might not have been able to envision. Don’t get so caught up in daily pressures that you forget the big, interesting questions that are all around you.