Religion in Mesoamerica: Writing, Rhetoric, and Performance

Harvard HDS

This course is an advanced seminar focusing on the study of sacred writings, political and cultural arts of communication, and ritual processes animating the lives, afterlives, and religious imaginations of various Mesoamerican peoples from the Postclassic and Colonial periods and beyond. Special attention will be given to reconstructing the theologies, moral philosophies and ritual strategies expressed in early colonial texts such as those compiled by Andrés de Olmos, Bernardino de Sahagún,…