Date/Time
Friday, April 17, 2015–Saturday, April 18, 2015
All Day
Location
UCLA Royce Hall, Room 314
10745 Dickson Plaza
—a conference organized by Jeanette Favrot Peterson, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Kevin Terraciano, University of California, Los Angeles
The conference considers how the many Nahua contributors to the Florentine Codex and their Spanish interpreter, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, used alphabetic and visual texts to represent themselves and their cultures to mixed audiences in Mexico and Europe. Participants examine the epistemological implications of a process that culminated in this unique manuscript, the product of a complex intercultural dialogue.
Papers analyze the differences and correspondence between information presented in the Nahuatl- and Spanish-language columns and in the manuscript’s hundreds of images in order to test the idea of the Florentine Codex as “three texts in one.” Although the focus remains squarely on the manuscript, diverse methodologies explore internal and external relationships of text and image. Sahagún and his scribe-artists relied on an eclectic body of imported and traditional indigenous sources—from European illustrated books and graphics to Mesoamerican screenfolds. As a site of multiple, contested literacies, the Florentine raises many questions, such as issues of authorship, the authority of text, identity formation, and gender and social relationships in New Spain. Also of concern are the reproduction, presentation, and reception of the images over time and how scholars have used the manuscript’s twelve books and three “texts” selectively to study a wide range of topics. Building on an impressive but scattered body of interdisciplinary, international scholarship, the conference attempts to open new avenues of research on the Florentine Codex and the early modern cultural exchange that this extraordinary manuscript represents.
Speakers
Molly H. Bassett, Georgia State University
Elizabeth Hill Boone, Tulane University
Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Jeanette Favrot Peterson, University of California, Santa Barbara
Diana Magaloni Kerpel, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Barbara E. Mundy, Fordham University
Guilhem Olivier, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Eloise Quiñones Keber, Graduate Center, City University of New York
Lisa Sousa, Occidental College
Kevin Terraciano, University of California, Los Angeles
The conference is co-hosted by the UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies and the Getty Research Institute, and co-sponsored by the UCLA Latin American Institute & Center for Mexican Studies and the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
Program
Friday, April 17 at Royce Hall, 314
9:30 a.m.
Morning Coffee and Registration
10:00 a.m.
Barbara Fuchs, University of California, Los Angeles
Welcome
Jeanette Favrot Peterson, University of California, Santa Barbara
Opening Remarks
10:15 a.m.
Session 1: The Art of the Tlacuilo
Chair: Daniela Bleichmar, University of Southern California
Eloise Quiñones Keber, Graduate Center, City University of New York
“The Use of Native Pictorial Sources and What Was Made of Them in Deity Images of the Florentine Codex”
Diana Magaloni Kerpel, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
“Painting Figures of Speech/Writing Information: Images and Texts in the Florentine Codex”
11:30 a.m.
Coffee Break
11:45 a.m.
Kevin Terraciano, University of California, Los Angeles
“Reading between the Lines in Book XII”
12:20 a.m.
Discussion
12:45 p.m.
Lunch
2:00 p.m.
Session 2: Deviance and the Super/Natural
Chair: Cecelia Klein, University of California, Los Angeles
Lisa Sousa, Occidental College
“Discourses on Deviance in the Images and Texts of the Florentine Codex”
Guilhem Olivier, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
“Teotl, Ixiptla, and Diablo: Indigenous and Christian Conceptions of the Gods in the Florentine Codex of Bernardino de Sahagún and His Nahua Informants”
3:15 p.m.
Coffee Break
3:30 p.m.
Molly H. Bassett, Georgia State University
“The Bundles of Earthly Things”
4:05 p.m.
Discussion
4:30 p.m.
Reception
Saturday, April 18 at the Getty Center Museum Lecture Hall
9:30 a.m.
Morning Coffee and Registration
10:00 a.m.
Thomas Gaehtgens, Getty Research Institute
Welcome
10:15 a.m.
Session 3: An Encyclopedia for the New World
Chair: Kim Richter, Getty Research Institute
Barbara E. Mundy, Fordham University
“Pantitlan and Other Erratic Waters in the Florentine Codex”
Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
“The Art of War, the Working Class, and the Snowfall: Reflections on the Assimilation of Western Aesthetics through the Use of Prints in the Florentine Codex”
11:30 a.m.
Discussion
11:45 a.m.
Coffee Break
Noon
Jeanette Favrot Peterson, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Rhetoric as Acculturation: The Anomalous Book VI within Sahagún’s Encyclopedic Project”
Elizabeth Hill Boone, Tulane University
“Sahagún, the Ancients, and the Indigenous Image: Conceptual Categories for Aztec Culture”
1:15 p.m.
Discussion
1:30 p.m.
Kevin Terraciano, University of California, Los Angeles
Closing Remarks
1:45 p.m.
Program Concludes
Conference Recordings
Getty Research Institute YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/gettyresearch
Conference webpage:
http://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/events/florentine_codex/schedule.html
Florentine Codex playlist:
https://youtu.be/FWsk9E4ernA?list=PLdcw4RhcVX8ufx-MWd2kThd4ZMP7jZCpE