USM Professor Gillespie Selected as Lecturer and Visiting Scholar for 2022 NEH Summer Institute

Wed, 05/11/2022 - 01:09pm | By: Ivonne Kawas

Dr. Jeanne Gillespie, Co-director of the Center for American Indian Research and Studies and Professor at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM), was selected as a lecturer and visiting scholar for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute for higher education faculty titled, “Worlds in Collision: Nahua and Spanish Pictorial Histories and Annals in 16th-Century Mexico” to be held from June 9 through 30 in Garden City, N.Y.

Funded by the NEH and sponsored by Adelphi University, this three-week Institute will enable faculty members from around the country 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.

Humbled to be among the recognized visiting scholars, Dr. Gillespie says, “I am honored that my colleagues selected me to share my research on the Tlaxcalans, the allies of Hernando Cortés and the Spaniards in the Conquest of Mexico. I will join some of the most recognized scholars in the study of Mexican Indigenous written and pictorial texts from the colonial era. I am thrilled to share my research with this diverse group of fellows who will be able to develop materials for their own scholarship and teaching.”

Dr. Gillespie will present two seminars about her research on the narratives and pictorial texts composed by the Tlaxcalans, members of an Indigenous republic who allied themselves with the Spanish forces under Hernán Cortés against the Triple Alliance (the Aztecs and their allies) in the conquest of Tenochtitlán. 

The first titled, “The Republic of Tlaxcala and its Colonial Legacy” will examine her research on the pictorial document known as the Lienzo de Tlaxcala documenting the Indigenous participation in the campaign from the Gulf of Mexico to Tenochtitlán.

The second titled, “Women’s Voices in Colonial Tlaxcala and Beyond/ The Poetics of the Cantares mexicanos” (“Songs of Mexico”) will examine the poetics of Tlaxcalan oral texts, especially performance narratives that include drumming notation, battle reenactments, and the voices of Indigenous women.

Dr. Gillespie teaches Spanish language and cultural studies courses as well as classes in American Indian Studies. (See her faculty profile)

Among the visiting scholars are: 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); 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); and Stephanie Wood (Director and Senior Research Associate of Wired Humanities Projects, Center for Equity Promotion, College of Education, University of Oregon).

Find more information about the Center for American Indian Research and Studies at USM or read more about the 2022 NEH Summer Institute.