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