Staging History: New Spain and the Theatre of the World

Event Description

In the sixteenth-century Americas, conquistadors, missionaries, and Indigenous elites and commoners organized spectacles for religious feasts and civic celebrations. This presentation centered on those that mixed plot elements from the Siege of Tenochtitlan with plot elements from battles taking place in the greater Mediterranean. It argued that by envisioning conflict in this corner of the world and relating it back to the invasion of the Valley of Mexico, participants created foundational narratives of New Spain.

Speaker

Nicole T. Hughes researches the early modern world with a special focus on New Spain (Mexico) and Brazil in the sixteenth century. Primary sources take a crucial role in determining her methods and approaches, and her current research engages with literary and cultural studies, historical anthropology, festive studies / theater history, conceptual history, and rhetorical analysis. She works with diverse texts—chronicles, historias, letters, autos, dialogues, epic and lyric poetry, novelas, legal treatises—and material / visual culture, including feather mosaics, woodcuts, and pictographic codices. Her research encompasses texts in Spanish, Portuguese, Classical Nahuatl, Tupi Antigo, French, and Latin.