Current Projects:

  • Contributor to Wikipedia
  • Research on visual culture in colonial Mexico and Mesoamerican ethnohistory
  • Spanish edition of The Testaments of Culhuacan with transcription from the Nahuatl and translation to Spanish, (joint with Miguel Leon-Portilla, and with the collaboration of Juan Carlos Torres Lopez), and analytical study, “El Libro de Testamentos de Culhuacan: Vida y Muerte entre los Nahuas del Mexico Central, Siglo XVI” forthcoming Universidad Iberoamericana Press February 2023

Selected Publications:

  • “Guadalupe and the Castas: The Power of a Singular Mexican Colonial Painting”
    Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos Vol. 31, Issue 2, Summer 2015, pages 218–247.
    Winner: 2016 Latin American Studies Association, Mexico Section, best article in the Humanities.
  • The Early History of Greater Mexico (with Ida Altman and Javier Pescador), Prentice Hall, 2003. (textbook)
  • The Book of Tributes: Early Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Censuses from Morelos Mexico. UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1993. (book)
  • “The Spiritual Conquest Re-Examined: Baptism and Church Marriage in Early Sixteenth-Century Mexico” Hispanic American Historical Review, 1993. (article)
  • Colonial Culhuacan, 1580-1600: The Social History of an Aztec Town. University of New Mexico Press 1986; ACLS EBook, 2007. (book)
  • “The Testaments of Culhuacan (with Miguel Leon-Portilla).” UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1984. (book)
  • “Native Peoples of Colonial Central Mexico” in The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas: Mesoamerica, 2000. (chapter)
  • The Conquest of New Spain 1585 Revision by Fray Bernardino de Sahagun.  (editor) University of Utah Press 1989. (book)
 

Honors and Professional Activities:

  • Elected member for a two-year term, 2018-2020, Board of Directors of the Conference on Latin American History, organization of Latin Americanists affiliated with the American Historical Association.
  • Winner, Latin American Studies Association, Mexico section, Best Article in the Humanities, for “Guadalupe and the Castas: The Power of a Singular Mexican Colonial Painting.” (2016)
  • Winner, Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies, Edwin Lieuwen Award for the Promotion of Excellence in Teaching Latin American Studies. (2016)   http://rmclas.org/edwin-lieuwen-award/
  • Winner, Harold J. Plous Award (outstanding assistant professor at University of California, Santa Barbara) 1986
  • Winner, Academic Senate Graduate Mentor Award (2010)
    http://senate.ucsb.edu/awards/2009.10/index.cfm?V=67B2A229A78F60954F89718F012FC6AE
  • Winner, Latin American and Iberian Studies Lifetime Achievement Award (2013)
  • Anonymous editor, Wikipedia
  • Member, National Endowment for the Humanities Kluge Grants Committee 2014
  • Member, American Historical Association. 2014 Convention Program Committee
  • Director, Latin American & Iberian Studies Program UCSB 1986-89; 2003-06
  • Chair, Department of History, UCSB 1995-97

Doctoral Students

  • Dr. Rafaela Acevedo-Field (2012)
    Diss. “Denunciation of Faith and Family: Crypto-Jews and the Inquisition in Seventeenth-Century Mexico.”
  • Dr. David Burden (2005)
    Diss. “La idea salvadora: Immigration and Colonization Politics in Mexico 1821-1909”.
  • Dr. Jason Dormady (2007)
    Diss. published as Primitive Religion: Restorationist Religion and the Idea of the Mexican Revolution 1940-1968. U New Mexico Press.
  • Dr. David Espinosa (1997)
    Diss. published as Jesuit Student Groups, the Universidad Iberoamericana, and Political Resistance in Mexico, 1913-1979. University of New Mexico Press
  • Dr. Cheryl Jimenez Frei (2018)Diss. “Shaping and Contesting the Past: Monuments, Memory, and Identity in Buenos Aires, 1811-present”.
  • Dr. Lee Goodwin (2022)
    Diss. “‘Bartering Hunger for Nakedness’: Frontier Exchange Economy of Spanish Colonial Texas”
  • Dr. Ronald J. Morgan (1998)
    Diss. Published as: Spanish American Saints and the Rhetoric of Identity. U Arizona Press.
  • Dr. Monica Orozco (1999)
    Diss. “Protestant Missionaries, Mexican Liberals, Nationalism and the Issue of Cultural Incorporation of Indians”
  • Dr. Stanley Shadle (1994)
    Diss. published as Andres Molina Enriquez: Mexican Land Reformer of the Revolutionary Era. U Arizona Press