Zoila Mendoza, a professor of Native American studies at the University of California, Davis, has been awarded a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship to continue her research on a recurring pilgrimage that Peruvian highlanders take through the Andes.

Mendoza, an anthropologist who has been studying the dances, music and festivals of her native Peru, said she was surprised and honored by the award from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She had just returned from a month of research in Peru when she received the news.

“This is the perfect time for me,” Mendoza said. “This is exactly what I needed right now to encourage me to finish this new, challenging project that I have been doing.”

Mendoza grew up in Lima, the big city capital of Peru. But both of her parents were raised in small towns perched much higher in the Andes, where she was introduced to an unusual array of festivals, music and dance.

“I was always fascinated by the importance of that for Andean people and, in general, Peru,” she said.

Her latest research focuses on a pilgrimage in which Quechua-speaking peasants and herders walk for three days and two nights up and down mountain paths, amid almost constant music and dance, to reach a sanctuary for worship. The 85-mile journey starts at an elevation of nearly 12,000 feet and climbs to 16,000 feet. Mendoza has made the grueling trek three times.

“It’s been the most challenging part of my research, the physical aspect of it,” she said. But the experience persuaded her to refocus her project.

“I’ve been studying dance from the anthropological perspective, but I’ve moved to a field that is truly interdisciplinary with the sciences — looking at actual senses, the sensorial and physical experience and how that intersects with culture.”

Mendoza joined the UC Davis faculty in 1994 as an assistant professor in the Department of Music. As a Native American studies professor, she has initiated classes in the Quechua language and culture. Quechua is the indigenous language of the Andes and the most widely spoken indigenous language of the Americas, she said.

In addition to the Guggenheim fellowship, Mendoza also received a grant from the American Philosophical Society to fund her research this summer.

“I am happy to share this honor with my department because this department has made my work possible,” she said. “I do things because I care about our culture and I care about our language and they have allowed me to do that and that has allowed me to flourish professionally.”

Jessie Ann Owens, dean of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, said she was thrilled by the news of the prestigious award.

“Zoila Mendoza typifies the excellent faculty in the division, especially in the breadth of her approach to the study of culture,” Owens said. “This award is also a tribute to our Native American studies department, with its distinctive hemispheric approach to the study of indigenous people.”

Mendoza is one of 217 artists, scientists and scholars who received Guggenheim fellowships this year. The 2010 recipients also include Petr Janata, an associate professor at the Center for the Mind and Brain and the Department of Psychology at UC Davis.

The fellowships were established in 1925 by former U.S. Sen. Simon Guggenheim and his wife, Olga, in memory of their 17-year-old son, John, who died in 1922. Each year, the foundation receives between 3,500 and 4,000 applications, of which approximately 220 receive awards.

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