Rebecca Dinkel
Rebecca Dinkel is an anthropologist specializing in Mesoamerican indigenous cultures and histories and the culture of public health. She uses multidisciplinary approaches from cultural, visual, and linguistic anthropology.
Biography
Dinkel's recent projects include public engagement work in the Capital Region of New York with a diaspora population of Copala Triqui speakers, an indigenous language originally from Oaxaca, Mexico. This project documents the culture and language of Copala Triqui speakers and provides publicly accessible resources for the Copala Triqui community. Dinkel’s dissertation work examines the role of metaphor in the construction of the ethnohistory of Mayan communities. It uses and contrasts visual, textual, and oral indigenous accounts from pre-Columbian, colonial, and contemporary periods. Another of Dinkel’s projects extends this work to understand the role of metaphor in the relationship between culture, public health, and the construction of truth in New York State during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dinkel received her doctoral degree from the University at Albany, her master’s degree from San Francisco State University, and bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Davis. She was also a fellow in the CSU’s Chancellor’s Doctoral Incentive program and received their dissertation fellowship. Dinkel is a visiting faculty member at Bennington for Spring 2025.