Department Faculty

“I am a Colonial Latin American historian with areas of specialization in colonial Yucatan, Mexico, Maya history, the Spanish Conquest, and Africans in Spanish America. During the 1990s my research focused on studying the Mayas of Yucatan through sources written in the Yucatec Maya language between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries; this work culminated in my books The Maya World (1997) and Maya Conquistador (1998). More recently, my research on the Conquest has been published as Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (2003) (for a podcast on this book, go to http://www3.la.psu.edu/las/graphics/7M-Master.mp3), while I have also received NEH and Guggenheim fellowships to study people of African descent in colonial Mexico and Yucatan. In 2005 I published three books: a Spanish edition of Seven Myths; an edited volume on relations between Africans and Native peoples in Colonial Latin America, titled Beyond Black and Red; and a co-authored volume called Mesoamerican Voices, reflecting my ongoing interest in indigenous societies in colonial Mexico, Guatemala, and Yucatan. I am currently writing a history of African slaves and free people of African descent in colonial Yucatan, focusing on issues of society and culture, and the nature of relations between Afro-Yucatecans, Spaniards, and Mayas.”