This is a 3-day conference for the Association of Nahuatl Scholars. Presenters will share on a variety of topics and there will be translation workshops. The Association of Nahuatl Scholars is an interdisciplinary organization of academics, teachers, and students dedicated to the study of Classical and Modern variants of the Nahuatl language, as well as pre-Contact, colonial, and contemporary Nahua culture.
Conference Program
THURSDAY, APRIL 16
8:00 Conference registration
9:00 Conference welcome - Barbara Mundy, Newcomb Art Department, Tulane; Anthony W. Pereira, Executive Director, The Stone Center
9:30-11:00: Session 1 | Barbara Mundy, moderator
Richard S. Tan | The Skin of Trees: The Materiality of Amatl in the Florentine Codex
Hailee Corbin | Tezcatl as Technique: Craft, Surface, and Material Transformation in Nahua Thought
Renata Ruiz Figueroa | The Imaginary Gods of Tlalocan: Sahagún and the Limits of Colonial Classification
11:00-12:00: Document Session 1 | Barbara Mundy, moderator
Alanna Radlo-Dzur, Nadia Cervantes Pérez, Humberto Iglesias Tepec | Traducese al Romance castellano, la Relación Mercuriana
1:00-2:30: Session 2 | Fritz Schwaller, moderator
Katarzyna Mikulska | The gods Macuiltonaleque and Cihuateteo: New Insights from Ms. Aubin | Mexicain 20
Agnieszka Brylak | Naming the Gods in Nahuatl: The Verbal Process of Constructing Divine Identities
Molly Bassett | Tlahtic: On the Inside
2:45-4:15: Session 3 | Fritz Schwaller, moderator
Veronica Rodriguez | Indigenous Support and Betrayal: How Mexico-Tenochtitlan Surrendered
Lori Diel | Luxury Items and Extractive Violence in the Memorial de los Indios de Tepetlaoztoc, c. 1554
Eduardo Gorobets Martins | Adapting and Persisting: Materiality and Kinship in Nahuas’ Relationships with Deities in the Colonial Period
4:15-5:15: Document Session 2 | Fritz Schwaller, moderator
Benjamin Johnson and Andrew Kalukin | Digital Tools for Nahuatl Scholarship
5:30-7:00: Reception and Book Celebration
How to be Grateful: An Aztec Guide to the Art of Gratitude, edited by Frances Karttunen and Camilla Townsend (Princeton, 2025).
Presented by Frances Karttunen and Camilla Townsend
Location: Cassat Courtyard, outside Jones Hall
FRIDAY, APRIL 17
9:00-10:30: Session 4 | Barbara Mundy, moderator
Citlalli Garcia Mendoza | Inintozcac Macehualmomachtiani - Native Scholar Voices, Their Educational Experiences, and the Process of Transcription
Cecilia Solís-Barroso and Eduardo de la Cruz | Creating Collaborative Spaces for Language Advocacy & Research: A Nahuatl |Spanish Bilingualism Workshop
Abelardo de la Cruz and Richard Tan | A Tribute to the Late Maestra Antonia Osorio Naranjo, Teacher of Nahuatl at Tulane University
Special event
10:30-12:15: Nahuatl resources at the Latin American Library
Christine Hernández, Exhibition on Maestra Antonia Osorio Naranjo
Location: Doris Z. Stone Latin American Library and Research Center, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library
1:15-2:45: Session 5 | Agnieszka Brylak, moderator
Jorge Arredondo | Nican Mopohua and Teponazcuicatl: An Analysis of the Inner Indigenous Influence in Nahuatl Accounts of Guadalupe
Julia Madajczak | The Library Metaphor: Books and Otherworlds in the Nahuatl Songs of Cantares Mexicanos
Katarzyna Szoblik | In the Tlalocan of Saint Francis: Traces of Nahua pre-Hispanic beliefs in the Cantares Mexicanos
3:00-4:00: Session 6 | Agnieszka Brylak, moderator
Sabina Cruz de la Cruz | El Embarazo en las Comunidades Indígenas
Alma de la Cruz Cruz and Sandro S. Espinosa y Mann | Ahhuiac Tlacualli tlen Techcahuilteuhtoqueh Tototatahhuan huan Yancuic Iohhui
4:00-5:00: Document Session 3 | Agnieszka Brylak, moderator
Gordon Whittaker | Glyphs with Gordon
Special event
6:00-8:30: Holt Lecture on Middle American Ethnohistory
Laura Matthew, Marquette University, Commerce Amid Catastrophe: Consumer Goods and Mesoamerican Lives, c. 1600,
Location: Stone Auditorium, Newcomb Art Building, reception to follow
SATURDAY, APRIL 18
9:00-10:30: Session 7 | Louise Burkhart, moderator
Celso Armando Mendoza | A Fate Worse than Death: Nahuatl Annals and the Damnatio Memoriae of Don Luis Cipac, the Last Dynastic Ruler of Tenochtitlan
Michael James Bax Corbalan and Tania Bride | Tomexicanantzin in Nican Tepeyacac: Guadalupe and Nahuatl devotion in the Bodleian's MS. Mex. e. 1
José Ignacio Reyes Abasolo and Justyna Olko | Macehualtlahtol tlen Motiquiteltiah, Techicahualtiah huan Teyecpiyah. Tlen Huiliz Ticmatizqueh itich Ahuacatlan, Sierra Norte de Puebla?
10:45-12:15: Session 8 | Louise Burkhart, moderator
Carlos Roberto Galaviz Sánchez | A’tlācātl. A Nahuatl Concept for Humans of the Periphery
Sergio Romero | Notarial Languages in Contact: Nahuatl and Kaqchikel Mayan in 16th-century Guatemala
Mariajosé Rodríguez Pliego | Translating Genre: Luz Jiménez’s Zazanilli and the Mediation of Orality
12:15-1:30: Lunch for participants and speakers
1:30-3:00: Session 9 | John Sullivan, moderator
Abelardo de la Cruz | El Uso del Fuego como un Conocimiento Indígena: Voces Locales de un Pueblo Nahua
Nicolas Barnum | The Category of "Verbos Neutros" in Colonial Nahuatl Grammars
Rocío Cortés | Modalidades de Escritura en Varios Manuscritos de la Zona de Hidalgo: Tizayuca, Tolcayuca y Huauhquilpan
3:15-4:45: Session 10 | John Sullivan, moderator
Ben Leeming | The Bibliographer’s Bane, Part II: In Search of the Author of the Nahuatl Epístolas y Evangelios de Todo el Año
Joshua Fitzgerald | Illumination or Amoxqualnezcayotl: Defining Hand 1’s Visual Amplifications from the Sixteenth-Century
Nahuatl Catholic Lectionary in Cambridge (Ms 375)
Gabriel Kendrick Kruell | New Readings of Eight Nahuatl Texts from the Codex Chimalpahin: A Critical Edition in Progress
