Please join The Latin American Library for a talk by Dr. Verenice Heredia Espinoza, 2023-24 Richard E. Greenleaf Fellow at the Latin American Library, who will discuss her work in progress: A comparative approach to Mesoamerica´s early social complexity.

Maps and maritime journals are essential instruments while navigating uncharted waters. However, these sources can also provide other forms to understand landscapes and communities. When French direct trade took the coasts of Peru by storm during the first decades of the eighteenth century, the King of France commissioned sailors to survey the coasts and provide detailed maps and descriptions that could help the French understand the territory better. Nonetheless, these journals were even further than providing navigational information.

Language has a natural tendency to change over time – except when it doesn’t. During a 300-year period at Tikal, the demands of genre dictate an astounding adherence to grammatical form in monumental texts of the historical narrative genre. This presentation provides the audience with foundational knowledge on literacy as a social practice before discussing specific findings on the apparent conservatism of grammar in selected Late Classic texts.

Yasmín López, a fearless indigenous leader from Honduras and the general coordinator of the Council for the Comprehensive Development of Peasant Women, will deliver the Annual Roe v. Wade Lecture titled "Territory and Body - Women Leading the Fight for Reproductive Rights in Latin America."