The term mythistory has been part of the English vocabulary since at least 1730 albeit with a continually evolving understanding (Mali 9). John Foster stresses a view that mythistory “does not imply a blurring of the metaphysical boundaries between history and myth” (107). more ›
El Palo Volador
Published Translation. Sixteenth-century Franciscan mendicant friar Juan de Torquemada describes the Indian practice of erecting a “flying mast” at major festivals and the missionary attempts to end its practice. (Copy of the published English translation of “Del palo volador de que usaban estos indios en sus fiestas principales.”)more ›
(Re)writing (Hi)story
Invited Panelist. The end of the Fifth Great Cycle in Maya cosmology (12-21-2012) is nebulous and poorly characterized. This is almost entirely the consequence of exclusive reliance upon the inadequate writings of epistemologically-conflicted Europeans.more ›
Ma(r)king Popol Vuh
Refereed Journal. Joe Bray, Miriam Handley, and Anne C. Henry have argued that “to mark a text is also to make it; [and] features such as punctuation, footnotes, epigraphs, white space and marginalia, marks that traditionally have been ignored in literary criticism, can be examined for their contribution to a text’s meaning.” In 2007 The Newberry Library disbound the oldest surviving text of Popol Vuh for conservation. That process made it possible to examine a number of paratextual markers calling into question popular perspectives of Popol Vuh as Indian auto-ethnography. This refereed article published at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill seeks to raise modern awareness of the manuscript’s paratext and its meaning for traditional assumptions of Popol Vuh’s survival and its narrative/textual boundaries.more ›
Disparities of Discourse in Popol Vuh
Conference Paper. Francisco Ximénez’s transcription and translation of Popol Vuh is not as straightforward and sterile as is generally presumed. The task requires intricate management of the textual and semiotic grids, both in the the Quiché transcription and in the Spanish translation.more ›
Rethinking the Context of Popol Vuh
Doctoral Dissertation. Although seventeenth-century Dominican priest Francisco Ximénez is credited for conservation of Popol Vuh, no critical attention is given to his personal agency and his ecclesiastical agenda. The oversight is particularly disconcerting where he plainly states in his prologue, “Esta mi obra, y trabaxo discurro q’ avra muchos q’ la tengan por la mas futil y vana de las q’ he trabaxado, asi lo pensaran muchos; y yo lo discurro al contrario, porq’ entiendo ser la mas util, y neçesaria.” My investigation is founded on answering the question: Why did Father Ximénez believe conservation of this text to be his crowning achievement? I answer this question by examining the four prologues of the Ayer manuscript to uncover Ximénez’s significant interaction with the text.more ›