Dr. Lynne Guitar

Dr. Lynne Guitar graduated cum laude from Michigan State University with two B.A.´s, and cum laude from Vanderbilt University with an M.A. and Ph.D. in history and anthropology. She jokes that she is a North American by birth, but Dominican in her heart because she has visited the Dominican Republic three times: the first time was for 10 days, the second time for four months, and the third time “forever.” The third time was August of 1997, when she came with a Fulbright Fellowship to finish the research and writing of her doctoral dissertation. Her special areas of study are the Taínos (the indigenous people of the Greater Antilles) and Dominican popular culture, particularly foodways, music and dance, religion, healing, art and artisanry, and gender-related issues.

Lynne is co-founder and director of Student Services, C x A--Santo Domingo, an educational tourism company; co-founder and co-editor of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink website and also co-editor of their electronic academic journal, Kacike; she’s the on-site director for an Internet educational program by World Classroom called “Discovering a New World,” which is a virtual classroom where students learn about Dominican archaeology, history, culture, geography, botany and biology; she’s the educational and cultural advisor for the Guácara Taína nightclub; and she’s a history and literature teacher at The American School of Santo Domingo.

Lynne has published many articles in professional journals and general-audience magazines about the Taínos and the first century of the Encounter Era on Hispaniola, as well as textbook chapters and dozens of encyclopedia entries. In her “spare time,” Lynne is writing a trilogy of historical novels about late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century Hispaniola. The first one is about the Spanish/Taíno encounter, but it´s told from the Taínos´ point of view.