Farriss, Nancy M. (Nancy Marguerite), 1938-

Nancy M. Farriss graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College in 1959, and in 1965 she received her Ph.D. in History from the University of London. From 1967 to 1968 she lectured in Hispanic Studies at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. Farriss left Jamaica for the College of William and Mary where she held the position of Assistant Professor of History. Her tenure at the University of Pennsylvania began in 1971 as Associate Professor of History. In 1983 Farriss was promoted to Professor, and in 1990 she was named Annenberg Professor of History. She has held secondary academic appointments as the Director of the Ethnohistory Program, as Director of Latin American Cultures Program, and with the Graduate Group in Anthropology, all at the University of Pennsylvania. Additional secondary academic appointments include Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University and the Directeur d'Etudes Associe at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.

Throughout her career Farriss has received numerous grants and fellowships including National Endowment for the Humanities grants, National Geographic Society grants, a Getty research grant, a MacArthur fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship. She has contributed over twelve articles and three books to current scholarship on Latin American studies. Her books include Crown and Clergy in Colonial Mexico, 1759-1821 : The Crisis of Ecclesiastical Privilege (1968), Maya Society Under Colonial Rule: The Collective Purchase of Survival (1984), and La sociedad maya bajo el dominio colonial (1992). In 1985 Farriss won the Wheeler-Voegel Prize from the American Society for Ethnohistory, the Beveridge Prize from the American Historical Association, and the Bolton Prize from the Conference on Latin American History for Maya Society Under Colonial Rule. Her article "Remembering the Future, Anticipating the Past," Comparative Studies in Society and History, won the Berkshire Conference Prize in 1988. In addition to her academic and scholarly work, Farriss contributed significantly to professional organizations.