Worlds in Collision:

Nahua and Spanish Pictorial Histories and Annals in 16th-Century Mexico

The Institute at a Glance

Depending on Public Health Guidelines related to COVID-19, plans for residential offerings are subject to change.

Welcome Letter from Project Directors

detail from copy of the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, 16th c.

     Applications are invited from college faculty, full-time or contingent, to participate in a three-week Summer Institute exploring the newly accessible archives of 16th century Spanish and Nahua textual and pictorial documents that give expression to the new existential realities created by the Spanish incursions into the Valley of Mexico in 1519-1521: the overthrow of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, and the founding of Spanish colonial Mexico City. The intriguing primary documents we will analyze — along with crucial secondary studies by our visiting scholars and others — take multiple forms: written alphabetic texts in Spanish or Nahuatl; ideographic calendars and books of divination; and pictorial histories in the form of scrolls, codices, lienzos (linens) and maps. The written source materials will be accessible to participants in English translation, with excerpts and secondary studies posted as library e-Reserves on an Institute Blackboard site, and the crucial pictorial manuscripts and maps will be accessible online, as well as in printed facsimiles.

     Every teacher/scholar dreams of the opportunity to immerse herself in the full array of source material of a given field of study, to be able to access directly the troves of primary source materials, whether manuscripts, photographs, artifacts, or rare print items. This project will provide Institute Summer Scholars an unprecedented opportunity to explore a unique archive in a collegial and supportive environment.

     Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and sponsored by Adelphi University, this three-week Institute will enable our Summer Scholar participants to explore the burgeoning new perspectives and theoretical approaches to 16th century Mexican textual, pictorial, and ethnohistorical studies with scholars who are in the vanguard of the development of new critical approaches. Institute seminars and discussions, among participants themselves, and with our renowned visiting scholars, will provide a compelling format for our Summer Scholars to engage directly with these new textual resources and critical paradigms

Visiting Scholar Faculty

Rolena Adorno (Sterling Professor of Spanish, Yale University)

Frances F. Berdan (Professor emerita, Anthropology, California State University, San Bernardino);

Amber Brian (Director of the Latin American Studies Program, University of Iowa);

Lori Boornazian Diel (Professor of Art History, Texas Christian University);

Jeanne L. Gillespie (Co-Director of the Center for American Indian Research and Study, University of Southern Mississippi);

Dana Leibsohn (Alice Pratt Brown Professor of Art, Smith College);

Barbara Mundy (Professor of Art History, Tulane University);

Matthew Restall (Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Colonial Latin American History & Anthropology, Penn State University);

Kevin Terraciano (Professor of History and Director of the Latin American Institute & Co-Chair of the Latin American Studies Graduate Program, UCLA);

Stephanie Wood (Director and Senior Research Associate of Wired Humanities Projects, Center for Equity Promotion, College of Education, University of Oregon).

Institute Stipend and Lodging

     The taxable NEH stipend for a three-week Summer Institute is $2,850, intended to help defray costs of travel, lodging, meals, and books in connection with the Institute.

     For our project, we have pre-arranged lodging for 22 nights at dorms on the campus of Adelphi University, in Garden City, Long Island, NY. For those opting to accept our collegial arrangements at Adelphi, participants will have lodging on a double basis in air-conditioned rooms with private bath (linens included), and laundry room on each floor, at a rate of $65 per night for 22 nights, from June 9 through June 30, departure on July 1. If, as a successful applicant, you opt to go with this lodging arrangement on a double-room basis we would then withhold $1,430 from your stipend of $2,850 and your cash balance stipend would be $1,420.

     Participants may, of course, opt to make their own housing arrangements off campus. Once successful applicants are notified of their acceptance on March 25, they must notify the project directors by April 8 whether they accept or decline the offer, and whether they opt for the campus lodging plan, or wish to make alternative housing arrangements.

For additional information you may also contact one of the Project Co-Directors:

Application deadline: March 1, 2022; notification date: March 25, 2022