Picturing a New World: Illustrated Manus

In this research seminar we will delve into the texts and images of four remarkable illustrated manuscripts created during the first century of the Spanish colonization of Mexico and Peru. Created by various agents—Spanish friars and indigenous authors and artists—these four bodies of work constitute some of the earliest and most important historical sources on the pre-Hispanic world of what is now Latin America, its history, and its traditions. But beyond their service as chronicles or ethnographies, these manuscripts can be examined as contested sites for the colonial negotiation of identity, culture, politics, and faith.

Our corpus includes the Mercedarian friar Martín de Murúa’s ca. 1590 and 1613 manuscripts on the history of the Incas and Peru, the native Andean author and artist Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s 1615 “New Chronicle and Good Government,” addressed to King Philip III in protest of Spanish colonial conditions in Peru, and the bilingual “Florentine Codex” compiled in Mexico in the 1570s by Nahua scribes and painters under the supervision of the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún.

This bridge seminar is open to undergraduate and graduate students.

Enrollment is by application. Spanish reading ability is highly recommended.