Camilla Townsend | |
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Born | January 29, 1965 |
Nationality | American |
Known for | History of Native Americans in the United States History of Latin America |
Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (2010) Cundill History Prize (2020) |
Academic background | |
Education | Bryn Mawr College Rutgers University |
Thesis | Doing a day's business in a new nation: A comparative study of daily economic activity in two early republican port towns. Guayaquil, Ecuador, and Baltimore, Maryland, 1820-1835 (1995) |
Doctoral advisor | Samuel L. Baily |
Academic work | |
Discipline | American history |
Institutions | Colgate University Rutgers University |
Camilla Townsend (born January 29,1965) [1] is an American historian and professor of history at Rutgers University. She specializes in the early history of Native Americans in the United States,as well as in the history of Latin America. [2] Her 2019 book, Fifth Sun ,won the 2020 Cundill History Prize. [3]
Townsend attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City. She graduated summa cum laude from Bryn Mawr College and received a Ph.D. in comparative history from Rutgers University. From 1995 to 2006 she taught history at Colgate University in Hamilton,New York. While teaching at Colgate,she enrolled in a summer course of Classical Nahuatl offered at Yale and became aware of how many primary and secondary sources were available in Nahuatl. [4] She is now a distinguished professor of history at Rutgers University. [5]
In 2010,she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. [6] During this time,she analyzed the Nahuatl historical annals from the 16th and 17th centuries,written by the Nahuas (or Aztecs) in their own language,using the Latin alphabet taught to them by Spanish friars for the purpose of reading the Bible to more easily convert them to Christianity. Townsend describes these writings,written without Spanish oversight unlike the Florentine Codex ,as a "written-down history by Nahua for Nahua children". [4] These writings,known as annals,or anales in Spanish,after the genre of medieval European writing which were believed to be similar,were effectively transcriptions of narrations of the pictographic texts in which the glyphs served as mnemonic devices. These texts were considered dubious sources by Western readers and historians for many years,in part because of their lack of overt chronicity and contradictory repetition. However,the repetition of the same story within the annals represented a way of Aztec history-telling,in which a series of speakers presented their own perception of an event,a battle,a marriage,etc. The translation of these polyphonous annals,written by the sons and grandsons of those alive during the Spanish invasion who remembered their youth as well of the stories of their ancestors,formed the basis for Townsend's book Fifth Sun:A New History of the Aztecs. [7]
Of course,scholars must be scrupulous and thorough. But I think young historians should also learn some lessons from the greatest fiction writers and most talented detectives. Close your eyes from time to time. Let your mind roam among all the evidence you have. Make the leap —Try to imagine the world as it was then. It will be worth the effort. [8]
Cuauhtémoc,also known as Cuauhtemotzín,Guatimozín,or Guatémoc,was the Aztec ruler (tlatoani) of Tenochtitlan from 1520 to 1521,making him the last Aztec Emperor. The name Cuauhtemōc means "one who has descended like an eagle",and is commonly rendered in English as "Descending Eagle",as in the moment when an eagle folds its wings and plummets down to strike its prey. This is a name that implies aggressiveness and determination.
Marina or Malintzin,more popularly known as La Malinche,a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast,became known for contributing to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521),by acting as an interpreter,advisor,and intermediary for the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. She was one of 20 enslaved women given to the Spaniards in 1519 by the natives of Tabasco. Cortés chose her as a consort,and she later gave birth to his first son,Martín –one of the first Mestizos in New Spain.
Moctezuma I,also known as Moteuczomatzin Ilhuicamina,Huehuemoteuczoma or Montezuma I,was the second Aztec emperor and fifth king of Tenochtitlan. During his reign,the Aztec Empire was consolidated,major expansion was undertaken,and Tenochtitlan started becoming the dominant partner of the Aztec Triple Alliance. Often mistaken for his popular descendant,Moctezuma II,Moctezuma I greatly contributed to the famed Aztec Empire that thrived until Spanish arrival,and he ruled over a period of peace from 1440 to 1453. Moctezuma brought social,economical,and political reform to strengthen Aztec rule,and Tenochtitlan benefited from relations with other cities.
The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico,particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Aztec culture was organized into city-states (altepetl),some of which joined to form alliances,political confederations,or empires. The Aztec Empire was a confederation of three city-states established in 1427:Tenochtitlan,city-state of the Mexica or Tenochca,Texcoco,and Tlacopan,previously part of the Tepanec empire,whose dominant power was Azcapotzalco. Although the term Aztecs is often narrowly restricted to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan,it is also broadly used to refer to Nahua polities or peoples of central Mexico in the prehispanic era,as well as the Spanish colonial era (1521–1821). The definitions of Aztec and Aztecs have long been the topic of scholarly discussion ever since German scientist Alexander von Humboldt established its common usage in the early 19th century.
The Aztec or Mexica calendar is the calendrical system used by the Aztecs as well as other Pre-Columbian peoples of central Mexico. It is one of the Mesoamerican calendars,sharing the basic structure of calendars from throughout the region.
The Nahuas are a group of the indigenous people of Mexico,El Salvador,Guatemala,Honduras,Nicaragua,and Costa Rica. They comprise the largest indigenous group in Mexico and second largest in El Salvador. They are a Mesoamerican ethnicity. The Mexica (Aztecs) were of Nahua ethnicity,as were their enemies,the Tlaxcallans (Tlaxcaltecs),and the Toltecs are often thought to have been as well,though in the pre-Columbian period Nahuas were subdivided into many groups that did not necessarily share a common identity.
Miguel León-Portilla was a Mexican anthropologist and historian,specializing in Aztec culture and literature of the pre-Columbian and colonial eras. Many of his works were translated to English and he was a well-recognized scholar internationally. In 2013,the Library of Congress of the United States bestowed on him the Living Legend Award.
The Anales de Tlatelolco is a codex manuscript written in Nahuatl,using Latin characters,by anonymous Aztec authors. The text has no pictorial content. Although there is an assertion that the text was a copy of one written in 1528 in Tlatelolco,only seven years after the fall of the Aztec Empire,James Lockhart argues that there is no evidence for this early date of composition,based on internal evidence of the text. However,he supports the contention that this is an authentic conquest account,arguing that it was composed about 20 years after the conquest in the 1540s,and contemporaneous with the Cuernavaca censuses. Unlike the Florentine Codex and its account of the conquest of the Aztec Empire,the Annals of Tlatelolco remained in Nahua hands,providing authentic insight into the thoughts and outlook of the newly conquered Nahuas.
The Aztecs were a Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican people of central Mexico in the 14th,15th,and 16th centuries. They called themselves Mēxihcah.
History of Tlaxcala is an alphabetic text in Spanish with illustrations written by and under the supervision of Diego Muñoz Camargo in the years leading up to 1585.
The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire,also known as the Conquest of Mexico,the Spanish-Aztec War (1519–1521),or the Conquest of Tenochtitlan was one of the primary events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. There are multiple 16th-century narratives of the events by Spanish conquistadors,their indigenous allies,and the defeated Aztecs. It was not solely a small contingent of Spaniards defeating the Aztec Empire but a coalition of Spanish invaders with tributaries to the Aztecs,and most especially the Aztecs' indigenous enemies and rivals. They combined forces to defeat the Mexica of Tenochtitlan over a two-year period. For the Spanish,Mexico was part of a project of Spanish colonization of the New World after 25 years of permanent Spanish settlement and further exploration in the Caribbean.
The traditions of indigenous Mesoamerican literature extend back to the oldest-attested forms of early writing in the Mesoamerican region,which date from around the mid-1st millennium BCE. Many of the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica are known to have been literate societies,who produced a number of Mesoamerican writing systems of varying degrees of complexity and completeness. Mesoamerican writing systems arose independently from other writing systems in the world,and their development represents one of the very few such origins in the history of writing.
Don Luis de Santa María Nanacacipactzin,also known as Cipac,was the last tlatoani ("king") of the Nahua altepetl of Tenochtitlan,as well as its governor (gobernador) under the colonial Spanish system of government. The previous ruler Cristóbal de Guzmán Cecetzin having died in 1562,Nanacacipactzin was installed on September 30,1563,and ruled until his death on December 27,1565.
The Mexica are a Nahuatl-speaking people of the Valley of Mexico who were the rulers of the Triple Alliance,more commonly referred to as the Aztec Empire. The Mexica established Tenochtitlan,a settlement on an island in Lake Texcoco,in 1325. A dissident group in Tenochtitlan separated and founded the settlement of Tlatelolco with its own dynastic lineage. In 1521,their empire was overthrown by an alliance of Spanish conquistadors and indigenous warriors,led by the Tlaxcaltec Tlatoani (king) Xicotencatl the Elder and the Spaniard Hernán Cortés. The Mexica were subjugated under the Kingdom of Spain for 300 years until they liberated themselves in the Mexican War of Independence in 1821.
New Philology generally refers to a branch of Mexican ethnohistory and philology that uses colonial-era native language texts written by Indians to construct history from the indigenous point of view. The name New Philology was coined by James Lockhart to describe work that he and his doctoral students and scholarly collaborators in history,anthropology,and linguistics had pursued since the mid-1970s. Lockhart published a great many essays elaborating on the concept and content of the New Philology and Matthew Restall published a description of it in the Latin American Research Review.
Quetzalcoatl is a deity in Aztec culture and literature. Among the Aztecs,he was related to wind,Venus,Sun,merchants,arts,crafts,knowledge,and learning. He was also the patron god of the Aztec priesthood. He was one of several important gods in the Aztec pantheon,along with the gods Tlaloc,Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli. The two other gods represented by the planet Venus are Tlaloc and Xolotl.
Frances Esther Karttunen,also known as Frances Ruley Karttunen,is an American academic linguist,historian and author.
Susan Schroeder is an American historian,specializing in the ethnohistory of Aztec people of Mexico and in the translation of colonial documents written in Nahuatl - especially the chronicles of Chimalpahin. She received her PhD in 1984 from UCLA where she studied Nahuatl and Latin American Colonial History with James Lockhart. She is professor emerita at Tulane University,where she taught from 1999 to 2009,after teaching at Loyola University at Chicago from 1985 to 1999. She received the lifetime achievement award of the American Society for Ethnohistory in 2017.
Quecholcohuatl was a Chalcan musician. He was known for making peace between his native altepetl of Chalco and Tenochtitlan by serenading its Tlatoani,Axayacatl,in 1479.
Fifth Sun:A New History of the Aztecs is a 2019 book by American historian Camilla Townsend. The book utilizes indigenous,as opposed to European,sources to tell the history of Aztec civilization. The book won the 2020 Cundill History Prize.