The University of Arizona Press
Date: Wednesday, October 9, 2024
Time: 4:30-6:30 p.m., CDT
Where: M.D. Anderson Library, Second Floor, Honors Commons (212C), University of Houston, 4333 University Dr., Houston, TX
Edward Anthony Polanco, author of Healing Like Our Ancestors: The Nahua Tiçitl, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Central Mexico, 1535-1660, will give a book talk on “Tiçiyotl in Mexico: Nahua Healing in Spanish Colonial Times,” at the University of Houston. Polanco is the Director of Indigenous Studies and an assistant professor of history at Virginia Tech. His research interests include Mesoamerica, Mexico, El Salvador, Indigenous sovereignty, Nahua peoples, and decolonization. This free event is open to the public.
About the book:
Offering a provocative new perspective, Healing Like Our Ancestors examines sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Nahua healers in central Mexico and how their practices have been misconstrued and misunderstood in colonial records.
Early colonial Spanish settlers defined, assessed, and admonished Nahua titiçih (healing specialists) and tiçiyotl (healing knowledge) in the process of building a society in Mexico that mirrored Iberia. Nevertheless, Nahua survivance (intergenerational knowledge transfer) has allowed communities to heal like their ancestors through changes and adaptations. Polanco draws from diverse colonial primary sources, largely in Spanish and Nahuatl (the Nahua ancestral language), to explore how Spanish settlers framed titiçih, their knowledge, and their practices within a Western complex.
