Professor: Davíd Carrasco
W - 3:00pm to 5:00pm

This seminar is an advanced introduction to the history and study of religious expression in the cultural area known as Mesoamerica from prehispanic times to the present. Utilizing a diverse array of primary and secondary materials with special use of pictorial and alphabetic codices, we will examine the themes of cosmovision, miracles, human body, gender, death, and the soul in Mesoamerican cultures. The course will focus on the development of beliefs, practices, and religious structures (in Mexica, Maya, and other cultures) such as ceremonial centers, spiritual geography, sacred architecture, divination and the ritual calendar, sacrifice, and imperial ideologies, in light of a range of interpretive approaches to the study of myth, sacred time and space, ritual performance, syncretism, and transculturation. Particular attention also will be given to regional and cultural variations, continuities and changes over time, and the impact and implications of conquest, colonialism, and the advance of modernity. Students will leave the course with a solid grasp of primary and secondary sources for understanding religion in Mesoamerica as well as the ability to contribute to the organization of new knowledge about codices, colonialisms, and cosmovision. Jointly offered in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as Anthropology 2317.