Anthropology 216MA - Maya Ethnography

Maya culture has long attracted the attention of travel writers, tourists, and anthropologists. This course introduces students to historical and contemporary patterns of Maya culture through careful analysis of ethnographic texts. We will read Maya cultural formations against the historical backdrop of colonial and postcolonial Latin American history, from Spanish colonialism through the Guatemalan civil war and into the present. Discussions will cover the content of ethnographic accounts as well as the institutional and disciplinary contexts of research. The course will pay particular attention to Maya history and cosmology as intertwined fields of cultural knowledge and practice.

Prereq: Anthropology 105.