As the world begins reckoning more acutely with women’s rights, inequality, and misrepresentation, Postdoctoral Associate Alanna Radlo-Dzur offered the course ART 419 / GSS 468 / LAS 414 “Nahua Women” to reframe and elevate the scholarship of indigenous art, history, and culture and women’s place in it.

“The intersectional complexities of gender and sexuality in Nahua communities are simply understudied topics, particularly in the contrasts between images made by Nahua women and those produced by others,” said Radlo-Dzur. “Likewise, the history of Nahua art and culture is still taught and mostly studied with surprisingly rigid temporal boundaries between pre-Hispanic, colonial, modern, and contemporary periods that reinforce scholarly silos with quite different methodologies despite the field’s inherent interdisciplinarity. By bridging these various lines of demarcation in our discussions, we explored new and innovative approaches both to art history and indigenous studies,” said Radlo-Dzur.

"In the context of further diminution of women’s autonomy and agency across the Americas, a focus on the resilience of Nahua women felt necessary to share with others.” —Alanna Radlo-Dzur 

The origins of the course

Radlo-Dzur’s inspiration for teaching a survey course on Nahua women sprang from a course taught by Sophie Touzé at the City College of San Francisco called “Women Through Art History,” which traced the representation of women from the earliest anthropomorphic images made in prehistory to contemporary global art. “By shifting the object of an introduction to art history from a sweeping tour of canonical highlights to one focused on the chasm between the representation of women and our lived experiences, the course still provided me with that tour of the canon but reimagined it into a call and response, particularly with its emphasis on artworks made by women artists,” said Radlo-Dzur. “That seemingly simple rearrangement of perspective was the first inkling of the possibilities of art historical methodologies that ultimately sent me onto my academic trajectory.”

Given the current debate over women’s rights, Radlo-Dzur sees Nahua women as an exemplary stronghold. “In the context of further diminution of women’s autonomy and agency across the Americas, a focus on the resilience of Nahua women felt necessary to share with others,” she said, citing protest movements in Mexico. 

She described a 2021 conflict surrounding a statue of an anonymous Indigenous woman’s disembodied head entitled “Tlali” (meaning “Land” in Nahuatl) intended to replace the monument to Christopher Columbus on the Paseo de la Reforma in downtown Mexico City. “The plan was abandoned after widespread protests against the installation of this particularly tone-deaf sculpture by a non-native, male artist,” said Radlo-Dzur. “Protestors occupied the site, dubbed the ‘anti-monument (traffic circle of the women who fight), installing on the vacant plinth an antimonument later dubbed ‘Justicia’ (Justice) representing a woman with her fist in the air.” The contingency plan, to install a copy of a recently unearthed monolithic statue of a 14th-century Huastec noble woman (La joven de Amajac), was also opposed on the grounds that it represented yet another privileged, elite figure from a distant time and place. 

“Today, the traffic circle remains occupied, highlighting high rates of femicide and violence against women in Mexico (and around the world),” said Radlo-Dzur. “These events underscore the vital importance of images depicting Native women and the many ways those images are used to manipulate narratives about class and race, power and inequality in the past as well as the present.”

For A&A graduate student Georgie Sánchez, the course expertly answered the question "How are indigenous resistances and Indigeneity represented in our current political moment?” “Radlo-Dzur’s course was a wonderful master class in interdisciplinary studies,” he said. “Together, we critically reviewed antiquated temporal boundaries between pre-Hispanic, early colonial, modern & contemporary periods, which not only reinforce scholarly silos but which exclude and invisiblize the lives and labor of women of color. I learned how early colonial period documents act as technological devices which produce taxonomies, among them, genders and sexualities, that very much continue until today.”   

"Radlo-Dzur’s course was a wonderful master class in interdisciplinary studies....Together, we critically reviewed antiquated temporal boundaries between pre-Hispanic, early colonial, modern & contemporary periods which not only reinforce scholarly silos, but which exclude and invisiblize the lives and labor of women of color." —A&A graduate student Georgie Sánchez

A conscientious approach

“I wanted to take this course because it dealt with an Indigenous culture very close to my own,” said first-year transfer student Ixtle Montuffar. Though they grew up in Maryland, Montuffar is culturally Hñähñu, an Indigenous community from lands now called Hidalgo, México. “I was so curious to gain a greater understanding of the legacy Indigenous women have had on the world, particularly in contemporary Mexican and Xicane spaces.”Montuffar appreciated Radlo-Dzur’s approach in presenting the course. “Professor Alanna Radlo-Dzur began the course in a profound manner that took into account her own positionality with Indigenous Nahua communities as a non-Indigenous and non-Nahua person. This was repeated continually throughout the semester and really opened all of us students to be more vulnerable with how we interacted with the course work,” said Montuffar. “Each of my classmates brought forward poignant and unique perspectives, oftentimes relating back to their own upbringings and cultural backgrounds.” Radlo-Dzur called the class “a warm and considerate community of care that resulted in deeply personal reflections.”

The course enabled Montuffar to explore their own culture and consider its legacy. “One of the first major assignments tasked us with examining a piece of art related to the course and I chose a photo I took in ra 'Batha ra 'Bot'ähi, el Valle del Mezquital, my ancestral homelands, of a mural that depicts one of our primary deities of ra 'uada, the maguey plant,” he said.“I know that I wish to emphasize the legitimacy of storytelling in my community as a form of Indigenous Science," said Montuffar, "particularly in relation to our sacred plants, such as ra 'uada.” 

A&A Junior Cindy Li designed a digital exhibition of Mexican artwork featuring women artists or subjects that particularly resonated with her, like Cortés y Malinche by Jose Clemente Orozco. “I was fascinated by the story of La Malinche and how she played a crucial role as a translator who connected the colonial Spanish culture and Indigenous Nahua culture,” said Li.  

Radlo-Dzur arranged the course thematically, focusing on a topic or set of interrelated ideas in some weeks and delving into the lives of particular Nahua women in others. Her deep engagement with the material cultivated a rich picture. “Much of the course content was pulled from my own research and featured readings by the Nahua intellectuals and students of Nahua culture that I have studied or studied with over the course of my career,” said Radlo-Dzur, “In selecting readings for the course, I hoped to demonstrate the wide range of perspectives that engage meaningfully with Nahua culture while at the same time highlighting the persistent misrepresentations and stereotypes that Indigenous women face today by examining their origins and the development of essentializing, misogynist tropes over time.” 

"I hoped to demonstrate the wide range of perspectives that engage meaningfully with Nahua culture while at the same time highlighting the persistent misrepresentations and stereotypes that Indigenous women face today by examining their origins and the development of essentializing, misogynist tropes over time.” —Alanna Radlo-Dzur

A running theme throughout the course demonstrated the recurring refraction and reimagining of earlier images, concepts, and narratives by later generations, underscoring, Radlo-Dzur emphasized, “the cyclical nature of Nahua conceptions of time as well as the incorporative strategies that make Nahua culture so resilient over the centuries.”

a graduate student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Estela Imigo Gueregat, “The highlight of the course was studying the visual language created in the Nahua world in clay figures, stone sculptures, and codices and observing how these communication technologies have been extrapolated in Indigenous and Chicanx art until today.” She was impressed by the scope of material. “I think the most impressive thing was learning about other forms of ideographic records, especially those inscribed on statues, clay figures, and codices created by Nahua artists in the pre-Columbian and colonial periods. Likewise, the large number of references to multiple artists and historical periods was one of the most important takeaways,” she said.

Sánchez, Imigo, and Montuffar all appreciated the course’s interdisciplinary approach. “My key takeaway from this course is that I have the power to center my Indigenous community in my scholarship and career,” said Montuffar, who aims to center Indigenous knowledge and science in all of their course work in their intended Ecology and Evolutionary Biology major. “Indigenous peoples should not be limited to one or few disciplines as we are multifaceted and have the ability, knowledge, and necessity to center our cultures in any space we wish to take up.”

Learning from experts

Three guests joined the class over the course of the semester. First, Harvard Fellow Matylda Figlerowicz spoke about her research on Doña Luz Jiménez, a Nahua woman whose image appears throughout the murals of Mexico City’s national palace and other historic buildings. The subject of works by renowned artists José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Anita Brenner, Tina Modoti, Fernando Leal, and Edward Weston, to name a few, Jiménez’s image is also captured in the Princeton University Art Museum’s collection in works by Jean Chalot. After examining her likeness in the Museum’s collection, Figlerowicz shed light on Jiménez’s own artistic endeavors as well as her role as a teacher. Jimenez surfaced again in photographs by Tina Modotti incorporated into a series of double-exposed self-portraits by Christina Fernandez exhibited at Art on Hulfish.

Multidisciplinary artist Marcela Torres joined the class via Zoom. “Torres’ work emphasizes embodied practices to reengage with Indigenous epistemologies, moving beyond the gender binary and exploring pathways to a more wholistic sense of self in community, said Radlo-Dzur. “Their projects explore many techniques of the body, from martial arts to cigar manufacture, emphasizing the role of creation in each ritual of labor.”  Their recent performances and community projects emphasize resilience and healing. 

And finally, self-taught Nahua painter Norma Martínez from the Chicontepec region of Veracruz in Mexico virtually presented the evolution of her painting practice and the representation of emotion in her work. 

“She emphasized how the psychological violence of misogyny affected her as a young woman,” said Radlo-Dzur, “and how her painting practice has served as an outlet to explore and heal her emotional body while reconnecting to her culture as well as the natural world.” 

Montuffar was especially impacted by Martínez’s work. “Martínez brought forward powerful and emotional stories through the paintings she shared with us, as well as personal insight into potential challenges in taking up space within and outside of our Indigenous communities,” they said. 

The class also participated in This Insistence: Preparation for Gathering organized by the K’acha Willaykuna Indigenous Arts and Humanities community at Ohio State, with discussions guided by the concept of insistence as characterized by the Alutiiq artist Tanya Lukin Linklater in her text, “A Glossary of Insistence” (2022). “This ongoing, expansive conversation inspired us to pause and reflect on the meaning of insistence generally and how we might call attention to the specific ideas, attitudes, and understandings insisted upon by the Nahua women we studied,” said Radlo-Dzur. 

At the close of the semester, Radlo-Dzur organized a preview and discussion of the upcoming exhibition Āmantēcayōtl: And When it Disappears, it is Said, the Moon has Died with Nahua artist Fernando Palma Rodríguez. Trained as an engineer, Palma produces kinetic installations that demonstrate Nahua epistemologies. The exhibition is on view through July 27, 2024 at Canal Projects, New York City.

“My key takeaway from this course is that I have the power to center my Indigenous community in my scholarship and career.”— Ixtle Montuffar '27

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In parallel with the “Nahua Women” course, Radlo-Dzur also co-taught with Nadia Cervantes Pérez of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese an Early Modern Nahuatl Workshop. “I initially organized it as an opportunity to meet regularly with Nadia Cervantes Pérez in support of her Translating Mesoamerica project and to see if we could pull a few other interested parties together,” said Radlo-Dzur. A devoted group of graduate students, faculty, and other staff formed. 

“The group’s enthusiasm was particularly evident when we viewed the collection in person during Humberto Iglesias Tepec’s visit to campus,” said Radlo-Dzur. Iglesias Tepec also participated in round table alongside Imigo. And he and Cervantes were interviewed by Philalatinos radio. 

The workshop was centered on providing tools, techniques, and resources to facilitate working directly with primary sources.  Radlo-Dzur and Cervantes covered the basics of Nahuatl grammar, colonial Spanish paleography, the Nahua calendar and mapping techniques. They will continue the workshop in fall 2024, and hopefully thereafter.

Iglesias Tepec, Cervantes, and Radlo-Dzur presented on the Translating Mesoamerica project at the Association of Nahuatl Scholars conference at the University of Indiana, Bloomington in late April 2024. “The annual event brings together about 50 of the world’s leading scholars of Nahuatl language and culture to parse difficult passages and present on new research,” Radlo-Dzur explained. “Folks in that community are particularly excited about our work because Princeton has one of the largest and most diverse collections of Nahuatl-language documents in the U.S. but most are understudied and unpublished.”

"Princeton has one of the largest and most diverse collections of Nahuatl-language documents in the U.S. but most are understudied and unpublished.”— Alanna Radlo-Dzur

Contact Alanna Radlo-Dzur or Nadia Cervantes Pérez to participate in the fall 2024 Early Modern Nahuatl Workshop.