Center for Regional Studies welcomes postdoctoral fellow

The Center for Regional Studies at The University of New Mexico recently selected Dr. Zonnie Gorman to hold the Center's postdoctoral fellowship from July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025.

The Center for Regional Studies (CRS) posted a Call for Proposals for a postdoctoral fellowship during the fall 2023 semester. After reviewing the proposals, an evaluation committee selected Gorman.

Gorman recently received her doctorate in History from UNM and completed a graduate minor in Museum Studies. Her interests include Diné masculinity and identity, the intersection of Indigenous masculinities and 20th-century wars, and memory and memorialization. Gorman is a professional, longtime public historian, lecturer, and consultant on the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II.

Gorman will spend a year at UNM's Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections (CSWR) processing the Carl N. Gorman Collection (1907-1998). Carl, Zonnie's father, led a long and prominent life. Born on the Navajo reservation in 1907, he was one of the original Navajo Code Talkers of World War II who served as the pilot for the successful Marine Corps communications program.

In the 1950s, he entered school at Otis Art Institute and worked as a draftsman for Douglas Aircraft in Los Angeles, Calif. In the 1960s, he worked for the Navajo Nation as the general manager for the newly established Navajo Arts & Crafts Guild and, later, was the director of the Navajo Cultural Center under the Office of Navajo Economic Opportunity (ONEO).

In 1969, he became one of the first four founding faculty members of the Native American Studies Department at UC Davis, which was one of the first NAS departments on an American university campus. He went on to teach at Diné College (then Navajo Community College), and at UNM's branch campus in Gallup, N.M.

The collection will contribute distinctive Southwest Indigenous history accessible to students, scholars, New Mexico community members, and the larger public interested in the Navajo Code Talkers, Diné history, Indigenous history, military history, and World War II history.

Previously, Gorman processed the William Dean Wilson Navajo Code Talker collection in the CSWR. Both collections, William Dean Wilson and Carl Gorman, represent members of the original pilot group of Navajo Code Talkers whose success in creating the initial Navajo code in 1942 established the Navajo Code Talker program.

Gorman will share her project with UNM students and faculty, as well as the community, through a public lecture in June 2025.

The mission of the Center for Regional Studies (CRS) is to promote the quest for knowledge about New Mexico and the Southwest through research, education, and the dissemination of information.