Barbara has experience with teaching and working with individuals and groups in various communities and educational contexts, and in developing experiential learning programs with a variety of cultural communities. She has promoted and expanded museum programs and experiential learning laboratories focused on local culture and (pre)history in collaboration with government, organizational, and educational institutions in northern Colorado. She has done research and web page development for the “Archival Initiative” program at the Fort Collins Public Library on Mexican-American women and their families in northern Colorado. As a business owner, Barb has worked with improving the positions of women in both job and educational oriented contexts and received the first Patsy Boyd Scholarship at Colorado State University for her work with women of disadvantage who were seeking technical careers in horticulture while in Seattle, Washington. She has recently published “Fieldwork in the Sugar Beet Fields of Northern Colorado” in High Plains Applied Anthropologist (Boulder, CO: University of Colorado), a narrative authored by a Mexican-American female who worked the fields in the 1950s. In addition, Dr. Hawthorne has received the Award for “Most Influential Woman Instructor” at the University of Northern Colorado; and the “Adjunct Teacher of the Year” at Aims Community College, both of which were student evaluated.

Research

Gender issues; art and culture; women in an international context; narrative and visual methodology in anthropological representation; global modernization and development processes; theory and methods in anthropological research; museology and the representation of culture in modernity; women of Mexican heritage in Colorado history and culture; art expression as a means of communication for women.