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David Carrasco, Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America at Harvard College, will present “The Cave, the Labyrinth, and the City: Deciphering a 16th Century Mesoamerican Codex”8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 22 in Kirby Hall of Civil Rights, room 104.
Carrasco also will present a brown bag lecture noon Friday, Feb. 23 in Limberg Theater in the Farinon College Center. He will discuss the newly cut version of the critically acclaimed film Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border. First released in 1997, Carrasco co-produced the film on the U.S.-Mexican border and the plight of undocumented immigrants.
Students and faculty members may view the film at an advanced screening 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 15 in the Limburg Theater in Farinon College Center. Students will be invited to submit questions for Carrasco. These questions will be addressed at the Feb. 23 brown bag lecture.
Carrasco’s lecture is sponsored by the department of religious studies under the auspices of the Lyman Coleman Fund, and supported by the Hispanic Society of Lafayette and the Office of Intercultural Development.
“To attend a lecture by Professor Carrasco is to experience first-hand how a truly first-rate historian of religions approaches his or her subject,” says Eric Ziolkowski, Dana Professor and head of the religious studies department. “In addition, this particular lecture will afford the Lafayette community what I am confident will be a memorable gaze at the amazingly rich religious mythology and world view of the native Mesoamerican people.”
Carrasco will speak on his current project: the reading and decipherment of a large 16th Century pictorial codex painted by natives in Mexico just 20 years after the arrival of Spanish settlers.
Lost to the public for years, the codex came to Carrasco’s attention several years ago. It includes depictions of the myth of origins, pilgrimage to the city of Cholula, settlement of lands with new fire ceremonies, human sacrifice, sacred bundles, sacred plants, earthquakes, floods, and marriage ceremonies.
“Professor Carrasco not only possesses the rare expertise and interpretive skills necessary for decoding the meanings and significance of such a work, but he is also a terrific speaker – dynamic, witty, thoroughly engaging,” adds Ziolkowski.
Carrasco will also be visiting Ziolkowski’s “Saints, Mystics, Ecstatics” class to discuss the religious significance and practices surrounding the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Carrasco is considered one of world’s most respected and prolific authorities on Mesoamerican religions, and also a leading theorist among historians of religions in general. This will be his second visit to Lafayette. He gave a slide lecture as part of the department of religious studies’ contribution to the Theodore Roethke Arts and Humanities Festival. He spoke on the religious significance of human sacrifice as practiced among the Aztecs.
Carrasco isa historian of religions specializing in hermeneutics in the study of religion, Mesoamerican religions, and the Mexican-American borderlands.
He is director of the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project, which was founded at the University of Colorado, where he taught from 1977 to 1993. He taught at Princeton University from 1993 to 2001, before joining the Harvard faculty. His work focuses on the symbolic nature of cities in comparative perspective, utilizing his 20 years of research in the excavations and archives associated with Teotihuacan and Mexico-Tenochtitlan. This has resulted in publications on ritual violence and sacred space, the Great Aztec Temple, the myth of Quetzalcoatl, and the history of religions in Mesoamerica.
Carrasco’s work has included a special emphasis on the religious dimensions of the Latino experience – “mestizaje”, the myth of Aztlan, transculturation, and La Virgen de Guadalupe. He is editor-in-chief of the award-winning three-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. Carrasco was recently given the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor the Mexican government gives to a foreign national.