Storied Walls :
Murals of the Americas
The Peabody Museum
Weekend of the Americas
October 5-7, 2007
Speakers' Biographies
Davíd Carrasco is the Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America and Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University (Ph.D., University of Chicago). He is a historian of religions specializing in Mesoamerican religions, and the Mexican-American borderlands. He is Director of the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project and publishes on ritual violence and sacred space; the Great Aztec Temple, the myth of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent; and the religious dimensions of Latino experience: mestizaje, the myth of Aztlan, transculturation, and La Virgen de Guadalupe.
William L. Fash is Director of the Peabody Museum and Bowditch
Professor of Central American and Mexican Archaeology and
Ethnology, Harvard University (Ph.D., Harvard University). Bill has
directed a series of multi-institutional, multi-national, and interdisciplinary
research efforts devoted to illuminating various aspects of
ancient Maya civilization at Copán, Honduras. His publications
include Scribes,Warriors, and Kings (1991, 2001), History Carved in
Stone (1994) and Visión del Pasato Maya (1995), both with Ricardo
Agurcia, and Copán: the History of an Ancient Maya Kingdom (2005)
with E.Wyllys Andrews.
Kelley Ann Hays-Gilpin is an Associate Professor of Anthropology,
Northern Arizona University and a Research Associate at the
Museum of Northern Arizona (Ph.D., University of Northern
Arizona). She specializes in southwestern archaeology and ethnology,
ceramics, gender, and visual arts. Her book Ambiguous Images:
Gender and Rock Art (2004) won the Society for American
Archaeology Book Award.
Heather Hurst is an archaeological artist, illustrator, and Ph.D. candidate
at Yale University. Heather specializes in the ancient paintings
and drawings of Precolumbian Mesoamerica. She uses different
kinds of primary materials collected by archaeological collaborators
for her reconstructions, and she is particularly noted for her work
with the Maya murals of Bonampak and San Bartolo. Her illustrations
have been published in National Geographic and Arqueología
Mexicana and exhibited at the Peabody Museum of Natural
History (Yale University) and the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, D.C. Heather Hurst is also the recipient of the 2004
MacArthur Fellowship.
Steven LeBlanc is an archaeologist and Director of Collections at the
Peabody Museum (Ph.D.Washington University, St. Louis). Steven
was the founder and first director of operations for the
Archaeological Conservancy in the early 1980s and a curator at the
Southwest Museum in the mid- to late 1980s. He is the author of
Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest, The Mimbres People:
Ancient Painters of the American Southwest, Mimbres Pottery: Ancient Art
of the American Southwest, and Painted by a Distant Hand: Mimbres
Pottery of the American Southwest (Peabody Museum Press, 2004).
Mary Miller is Vincent Scully Professor of the History of Art,Yale
(Ph.D.,Yale University). Mary Miller is currently working on the
documentation and reconstruction of the Maya wall paintings at
Bonampak, Mexico. Mary is the author of Maya Art and
Architecture, The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: A
Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion (with Karl Taube), The Art of
Mesoamerica, The Murals of Bonampak, and The Blood of Kings (with
Linda Schele). Her many articles address questions of Aztec and
Maya art, as well as the historiography of Precolumbian art.
Jeffrey Quilter is Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Curator,
Intermediate Area Collection, Peabody Museum, Harvard
University (Ph.D. University of California, Santa Barbara).
Formerly Director of Precolumbian Studies and Curator of the
Precolumbian Collection at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington,
D.C., Jeff has conducted archaeological field investigations in
several U.S. states, Costa Rica, and Peru, including the El Brujo
archaeological complex, Peru. He is the author of Life and Death at
Paloma: Society and Mortuary Practices in a Preceramic Peruvian Village
(1989), Cobble Circles and Standing Stones: Archaeology at the Rivas
Site, Costa Rica (2004), and Treasures of the Andes (2005).
William Saturno is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Boston
University and a Peabody Museum researcher (Ph.D. Harvard
University). Bill is currently directing the San Bartolo excavations
in Guatemala. In 2001, he discovered there the oldest, most elaborate
Maya wall paintings found to date, spanning four walls of a
buried chamber.The discovery has contributed greatly to the
understanding of Maya iconography and culture. Since then, he
has expanded the scope of the project, finding more fragments,
including some of the oldest known writing in Mesoamerica.
Javier Urcid is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis
University (Ph.D.,Yale University). He serves as Brandeis’ liaison to
the Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology
(CMRAE) consortium, as well as on the steering committees of
the Latin American and the Non-Western Studies Programs. His
research concentrates on understanding the developments and
methods of ancient writing systems and the role of literacy in the
formation of social hierarchies and inequality. He has conducted
extensive archaeological fieldwork throughout Mexico, Belize,
Ecuador, and Syria, and is the author of Zapotec Hieroglyphic Writing (2001).
Teresa Uriarte is Professor of Art History and Dean of the Council for
Art and Humanities at the National Autonomous University of
Mexico. She holds the Ph.D. from the National Autonomous
University of Mexico and specializes in the art and funerary practices
of the Baja California Indians and Precolumbian art in
Mexico, especially the murals of Teotihuacan. For eight years she
directed the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas.