May 10, 2025 Dr. Benjamin D. Johnson, University of Massachusetts Boston.: “Landscape and Politics in the Codex Xolotl.”
Based on years of extensive work by multiple scholars, this presentation shows new ways of “ground truthing” certain key sections of the Codex Xolotl, by making specific reference to both people and landscape. Narrative form and genre certainly matter, but this presentation foregrounds the history in this document as opposed to the historiography, although the patterns of Nahua writing will also be key. Changing the history, after all, also changes the wider historiography.
Benjamin D. Johnson is an associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He was PI for a NEH grant on the Codex Xolotl (2018-21) and is beginning to present final results from this project. Before this, he wrote a book on Nahua tlaxilacalli communities called Pueblos Within Pueblos (2018) and provided the translations for Documentos nahuas de Tezcoco (2018).