Rita Palacios | Mesoamérica Undone: Reframing the Conversation through Maya Understandings of Space

Event description For Maya peoples, the region we often refer to as Mesoamérica is much more than a space demarcated by geopolitical borders, defined by contemporary academic thought, or historicized by scholars. Well before invasion, Indigenous peoples in the Western hemisphere were already moving through the land, exchanging goods and ideas, sustaining communities, and imagining themselves in the world. While we cannot reconstruct such realities and imaginings, we can rethink Mesoamérica using the work of contemporary Maya thinkers and practitioners (artists, weavers, and poets) and propose other ways of understanding the region. Through examples in contemporary Maya art, literature, and philosophy we reflect on notions of space and time to help us envision alternatives to models that have endeavored to define, describe, and prescribe the original territories of Indigenous people. What happens when the world is reoriented, and when past, present, and future are in constant dialogue in this reorientation? Part of the series Mesoamerica: Disrupting Narratives, Past and Present, supported by CLACS. Co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature.