Symposium brings together scholars, academics in Mesoamerican studies

April 1, 2014

Cal State L.A. pays homage to Patricia R. Anawalt

Los Angeles, CA – Featuring more than a dozen distinguished scholars, Cal State L.A.’s Art History Society presents the 2014 Mesoamerican Symposium, entitled “Empires of the Sun: Culture and Power in Mesoamerica,” on Friday, April 4, 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. and Saturday, April 5, 8 a.m.-6 p.m.

Mesoamerica is a region and cultural area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica, within which a number of societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries.  It is one of six regions in the world where ancient civilization arose independently.

The symposium, which pays homage to the life and work of Mesoamerican studies expert Patricia R. Anawalt, will take place in the State Playhouse on Friday and the Golden Eagle Ballroom on Saturday. Anawalt will be presented with the Tlamatini Award for lifetime achievement during the Saturday program. Tlamatini is a Nahua word that means wise man or teacher.

Anawalt is director emerita and founding director of the Center for the Study of Regional Dress located at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. The Center is an endowed research facility. Anawalt is a specialist in the history of ethnographic clothing and textiles and is a world- renowned authority on Mesoamerican ritual and quotidian attire as well as worldwide regional dress. Her previous publications include the prize-winning, four-volume Codex Mendoza, as well as dozens of articles. She is a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and also served on the initial President’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee. She earned her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. at UCLA in the field of archaeology.

Symposium sessions will cover the following topics:

  • “Reading the Codex Mendoza,” by John M.D. Pohl;
  •  “The New Support of Heaven,” by Diana Magaloni-Kerpel;
  • “The Importance of Drum in Aztec Military Contexts,” by Elizabeth Baquedano;
  • “The Controversies of Chocolate in Colonial Mexico,” by Manuel Aguilar-Moreno;
  • “Costumes for the World: Aztec Dress Explained in the Early Pictorial Ethnographies,” and more.

For more about the symposium, go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/AHS-Art-History-Society-at-CSULA/425830835314.  

Admission is $15, and $10 for students. The symposium is cosponsored by the Department of Art and the College of Arts and Letters at Cal State L.A. To register, please email [email protected].

Cal State L.A. is located at the Eastern Avenue exit, San Bernardino Freeway, at the interchange of the 10 and 710 Freeways. Public (permit dispensers) parking is available on the top level of Parking Structure C. For campus maps and directions: /univ/maps/cslamap.php.

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