Journal Articles
Print Quarterly, 2023
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Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, 2021
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Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, 2021
This is a translation of an article originally published as Tras los pasos de un artista en blanc... more This is a translation of an article originally published as Tras los pasos de un artista en blanco y negro: identidad y agencia en los grabadores limeños del siglo XVIII. The Spanish version, also uploaded to academia.edu, is the version of record.
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Material Religion, 2021
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Print Quarterly, 2020
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Metalworking occupies a unique place within Inca artistic production. A surprising percentage of ... more Metalworking occupies a unique place within Inca artistic production. A surprising percentage of the surviving works in this high-value medium might be considered anthropomorphic or zoomorphic, making them singular in the Inca artistic corpus, famed for its avoidance of flora and fauna. Descriptions by Spanish chroniclers suggest that many more anthropomorphic and even perhaps “naturalistic” works once existed. This essay thereby grapples with the following two questions: why did the Inca approach metal so differently from other sculptural media, most notably stone? And how do we square descriptions of Inca metalwork’s “naturalism” in European chronicles with what we might describe, at best, as anthro- or zoomorphic forms in the surviving Inca corpus? I draw on evidence of precious metal sculptures found in archaeological contexts, recent research on the Berlin museum “Inca” corncob, and an analysis of the chroniclers’ writings to address the prevalence of anthropomorphism in Inca gold and silver production and argue that, for the Inca, the materials with which they worked shaped the representational modes they employed. Rather than inert substances awaiting the intervention of the artisan, materials could be numinous agential entities in their own right. Stone, the Inca material par excellence, possessed inherent agency, in that the Inca perceived stones as living entities; these were often left entirely unhewn. In contrast, gold, with its malleability and potential for fluidity, was not considered a living being in its own right, but instead metallic effluvia, the tears of the powerful sun deity. As tears, gold was charged with the power of this important deity but was not in and of itself living. This distinction between gold as tears of the sun, and stone, with its own intrinsic vitality, explains the contrasting ways in which the Inca worked the two materials: metals were sacred but not living and, due to their fluidity, had no “natural” state or shape. Thus, unlike stone, they could and perhaps should be shaped into anthropomorphic forms without betraying their own essential nature. To grasp this essential difference between metal and stone, it is necessary first to reframe “naturalism” against Spanish chroniclers’ descriptions and to excavate the ways in which Spanish sources have largely and perhaps unavoidably shaped our perception of Inca metalwork.
(To read the complete article, follow this url: http://mavcor.yale.edu/conversations/medium-studies/tears-sun-naturalistic-and-anthropomorphic-inca-metalwork)
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The Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion at Yale University (MAVCOR) ... more The Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion at Yale University (MAVCOR) does not simply, or even most fundamentally, shape a physical center at Yale University. Although MAVCOR organizes events at Yale and coordinates project cycles involving Yale affiliates as well as scholars from other universities in the United States and around the world, much of MAVCOR’s activity is conducted online. MAVCOR publishes a born-digital, open-access double-blind peer-reviewed journal, MAVCOR Journal. It also features a born-digital exhibition space, the Material Objects Archive. In at least two ways, MAVCOR is deliberately interstitial, invested in the connective spaces between both disciplines and technologies. First, the Center emerged from a desire to promote interdisciplinary conversation among scholars of religion, art history, anthropology, and others engaged with our subjects of inquiry. We have aimed to accomplish this goal by shaping a forum for conversation and an archive for mutual use. Second, MAVCOR engages the need to form a space for peer-reviewed content online in a manner that emphasizes the mutually beneficial relationship of print and digital modes of inquiry. In this work, MAVCOR’s overarching commitment is to promote innovative, substantively researched, thoughtfully constructed scholarship, with robust interdisciplinarity as a fundamental element of form and content.
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Book Chapters
Collective Creativity and Artistic Agency in Colonial Latin America, 2023
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Digital Humanities and Research Methods in Religious Studies: An Introduction, Vol 2, 2021
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A Companion to Early Modern Lima, 2019
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Plata de los Andes, 2018
In Plata de los Andes, edited by Ricardo Kusunoki Rodríguez and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden. Lima: Mus... more In Plata de los Andes, edited by Ricardo Kusunoki Rodríguez and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden. Lima: Museo de Arte de Lima, 2018.
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Catalog Entries
La colección Petrus y Verónica Fernandini: El arte de la pintura en los Andes
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From Early Modern Faces: European Portraits 1480-1780
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From Early Modern Faces: European Portraits 1480-1780
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Blog Posts and Public Scholarship
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Sometimes a document is much more than the text it contains. The roughly 40 late-colonial-era Per... more Sometimes a document is much more than the text it contains. The roughly 40 late-colonial-era Peruvian cartas de hermandad (confraternal letters) in the JCB’s collection were a source of surprise and delight to me when I discovered them as part of my research as a Library Associates Fellow in fall of 2015. As single-sheet imprints they were a deceptively simple grouping: a type of document that often doesn’t survive, but that historically would have been among the most abundant products of colonial Peruvian presses. They are what Peter Stallybrass has deemed “little jobs,” those quickly assembled and rapidly printed ephemeral invitations, childrens’ grammars, calendars, pamphlets, bulls, almanacs, and broadsides that were printers’ bread and butter. Objects of this nature are relatively rare today for diverse reasons: while many of them were made for specific occasions and then thrown away after the event had passed, others saw heavy use, as when children learning to read thumbed the pages of grammars to shreds.
(For complete essay, click here: http://blogs.brown.edu/jcbbooks/2016/05/16/material-connections-peruvian-cartas-de-hermandad-at-the-jcb/)
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On February 9, 2009, the New York Times ran an article titled “For Catholics, a Door to Absolutio... more On February 9, 2009, the New York Times ran an article titled “For Catholics, a Door to Absolution Is Reopened,” describing the Catholic Church’s reintroduction of indulgences after ending the practice in the wake of Vatican II. Indulgences are best known to the general public for having attracted the ire of Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther during the Protestant Reformation. The logic of indulgences rests on the concept of Purgatory, an intermediary space in which souls are purged of their sins prior to being welcomed into Heaven. The souls of those who had committed unforgivable mortal sins in life went straight to Hell and damnation, but the majority of individuals who had sinned less drastically would spend some amount of time in temporary torment in Purgatory. Indulgences granted the recipient remission of that time. As the New York Times article described, many contemporary Catholics were confused by the purpose and function of indulgences. One woman asked, “What does it mean to get time off in Purgatory? What is five years in terms of eternity?”
Eighteenth-century Peruvian printed indulgences suggest that the opaque nature of the indulgence isn’t limited to the twenty-first century. . . . (For complete essay, click here: http://materialreligions.blogspot.pe/2016/02/the-power-of-image-in-peruvian.html)
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Talks
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Journal Articles
(To read the complete article, follow this url: http://mavcor.yale.edu/conversations/medium-studies/tears-sun-naturalistic-and-anthropomorphic-inca-metalwork)
Book Chapters
Catalog Entries
Blog Posts and Public Scholarship
(For complete essay, click here: http://blogs.brown.edu/jcbbooks/2016/05/16/material-connections-peruvian-cartas-de-hermandad-at-the-jcb/)
Eighteenth-century Peruvian printed indulgences suggest that the opaque nature of the indulgence isn’t limited to the twenty-first century. . . . (For complete essay, click here: http://materialreligions.blogspot.pe/2016/02/the-power-of-image-in-peruvian.html)
Talks
(To read the complete article, follow this url: http://mavcor.yale.edu/conversations/medium-studies/tears-sun-naturalistic-and-anthropomorphic-inca-metalwork)
(For complete essay, click here: http://blogs.brown.edu/jcbbooks/2016/05/16/material-connections-peruvian-cartas-de-hermandad-at-the-jcb/)
Eighteenth-century Peruvian printed indulgences suggest that the opaque nature of the indulgence isn’t limited to the twenty-first century. . . . (For complete essay, click here: http://materialreligions.blogspot.pe/2016/02/the-power-of-image-in-peruvian.html)