Search

Yucatec Maya orality has been a popular topic of study of scholars from a wide array of disciplines. These studies often rely on academically generated categories of speech that have often been stylized in forms that descend from Western thought. The generated speech categories may overlook more performance-based forms that are more common of Indigenous knowledge systems. Most of the collected and analyzed Maya oral literature appears to be recounted by men, leaving women’s orality and their unique ways of interpreting the world largely under-documented. In this paper, I expand our understanding of Yucatec Maya women’s oral literature by providing a systematic documentation and description of u t’aan nukuch máak, words of the elders, a ‘speech’ genre that relies largely on performance. The performance of u t’aan nukuch máak are an embodiment of my female collaborators’ culture, as they occur in their daily routines. U t’aan nukuch máak are performed (or uttered) in the context of certain bodies, objects, times, and spaces that index concepts that reflect the strength of Maya cultural memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates connections between queer studies and the contributions of Aby Warburg to image theories, specifically the notion of time as a fundamental conceptual operator in the work of Warburg and his main exegete, Georges Didi-Huberman, from whom we sought help in the endeavor of envisioning a queer pathos that would survive in visual culture. Time is also at the core of a certain criticism by some authors of queer studies to the notion of chrononormativity as biopolitical regulation. This paper attempts to understand how Warburgian notions of Nachleben and Pathosformel help to investigate how abject and anachronistic gestures which keep reappearing as a queer symptom in culture, disorganizing a “natural model” of history of art and breaking with the history of progress that organizes relations between gender, body and sexuality according to disciplinary temporal schema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a textual analysis of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself", revealing its significance as a national poem. The paper argues that Whitman's "Song of Myself" breaks literary and political limits, challenging the sovereignty of the nation. By examining "Song of Myself" in the six different editions of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, this paper will further analyze Whitman's style and his speaker as representations of the limitations and sovereignty of literary tradition and the politics of his nation. By "politics," I refer to the religious, political, and social doctrines that shape the nation. By "literary," I mean the traditional literary style of writing, such as the poem's form, scope, and subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have proposed that for decades after the conquest of Yucatan Maya scribes wielded competence in both the old hieroglyphic and the new Latinbased alphabetic scripts. During that time some scribes apparently worked furtively to transfer parts of their pre-conquest traditions, encoded in hieroglyphic codices, into new forms of alphabetic-based writing such as the Books of Chilam Balam and other forbidden works. Various types of evidence --historical and philological-- have been offered to substantiate claims concerning the lingering effects of hieroglyphic writing practices upon Maya use of the alphabetic script in early colonial times. In the light of new evidence from twentieth-century Maya scribal practice, this paper demonstrates that previously published arguments, especially those developed in an influential series of papers by distinguished Mayanist Victoria Bricker, can no longer be considered valid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decipherment of the Maya script is still far from completion and awaits the interpretation of a considerable number of logograms and syllabic signs. This paper is dedicated to the composite sign that has been previously considered a ligature of two syllabic signs, tzo and ko. The present analysis shows that these two graphic elements are never written separately and that the ko-like element differs from the other ko syllables attested in the corresponding inscriptions. The sign is found in the context of other syllables involving the mid-front e vowel, implying a previously unrecognized Ce syllable, with “C” standing for an unknown consonant. In Palenque, the sign follows the le syllable; the combination of these two signs is attested in the position of a predicate, which might be interpreted as the verb letze, “he/she climbed, went up”. The data collected allow us to propose the phonetic reading tze and fill one more gap in the Maya syllabic grid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the relationship between the female traveling experience and the epistolary genre through a reading of Rosario Castellanos's Cartas a Ricardo as travel literature. The aim is to analyse the hybrid nature of the letter as a genre that allows the exploration of ideas and confessing or revealing affects during particular processes of constructing female subjectivities. Different than conven-tional travel chronicles, it is argued that the travel accounts transmitted through the female epistolary genre can throw light on physical and emotional displacement, but also on the intellectual and creative work of women in (self)censored or repressed environments. It is concluded that for Castellanos both traveling and writing are conscious acts of intellectual and gender freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visual language of the paintings has undergone a theoretical and pragmatic process, which is different than that of textual linguistics. In this paper we propose a method of analysis based on semiotics to elucidate and compare the visual response of six paintings of the pre-Columbian Maya Dresden Codex. The Venus table was chosen because it presents a calendrical-astronomical message through a visual language that makes its interpretation complex. We consider that the visual semiotics of the Quebec School represented by Saint-Martin and Shannon's entropic comparison of the Venus table paintings may be applied to both classical and contemporary pictorial works to support the work of art historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The grapheme T648 in the Maya script occurs exclusively in the Postclassic period. Whether it is a CV syllable or a CVC logogram has been in question. In this paper we resolve that issue. Also, we suggest that the Classic version of the sign is T694, which led us to query relevant environments of both versions of the grapheme. We have found a solid substitution in the Postclassic codices with which we can answer several unknown collocations in the Classic Period. We offer CVC and V values for T648/694 and demonstrate their productivity in different contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Henry Louis Gates has taken Saussure's term "signifying" and redefined it as a linguistic wordplay which postpones the delivery of meaning and believes in "double-voicedness", this means to speak both the language of the dominant culture and that of the subordinated one. He also asserts "doublevoicedness" as the epitome of "Signifyin (g)". This paper intends to apply the notions of "Double-voicedness" and "Signifyin (g)" on the manuscript of Les Blancs, written by Lorraine Hansberry, and highlights the anti-colonial aspects of the play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper offers an edited, critical transcription of an early, relevant text on haṭhayoga. The transcription is based on three different recenssions fom North and South India. One purpose is to overcome difficulties in the reading of the text, due to the discrepancies among different editions. It also seeks to foster further academic work (both philological and exegetical) from different scholars on this text as well as on the broader textual tradition of haṭhayoga. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper offers an edited, critical transcription of an early, relevant text on haṭhayoga. The transcription is based on three different recenssions fom North and South India. One purpose is to overcome difficulties in the reading of the text, due to the discrepancies among different editions. It also seeks to foster further academic work (both philological and exegetical) from different scholars on this text as well as on the broader textual tradition of haṭhayoga. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to gather the most complete list of recorded Triadic Groups from the Maya Area, and subsequently analyze various aspects of their spatial and temporal occurrence, as well as their architecture, urban context, and iconography, in order to re-- evaluate the existing theories and, possibly, arrive at a new one. The final conclusion states that both previously existing theories, namely those interpreting Triadic Groups as either earthly replicas of the Cosmic Hearth, or architectural stages for king's accession rituals, cannot be entirely dismissed. However, they demonstrate possible secondary functions and meanings of the Triadics, limited to a certain number of known triadic assemblages. A more general interpretation is introduced, according to which Triadic Groups can be perceived as architectural stages and replicas of the Flower Mountain at the specific moment of the Maize God's resurrection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an updated version of a short text in the Seri language, about how the blue bottlefly sits on carrion and essentially is making smoke signals that then attract vultures. The text was one of two texts first published in E. Moser (1968). Discussion of the evolution of the text and its analysis is presented as well as a new detailed interlinearization that gives the morphological composition of the words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Norman Sicily of King Roger II (1095-1154) and William I (1125- 1166) represents an essential bridge for the transmission of classical heritage and Arab knowledge. In this paper we want to focus on this movement of transmission, stress the differences towards the Spanish case and show who the main actors were and in what consists the originality of the First Sicilian School of Translators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeologists frequently examine architectural styles to detect migration and cultural interaction among Maya groups on the Yucatán peninsula. In this paper we examine the basis of this assumption by applying Michael Schiffer's (2002) framework for studying technological differentiation to the results of our ethnoarchaeological investigation of 20th century Maya vernacular architecture in the village of Silvituc, southwestern Campeche. In the wake of the Caste War and the Mexican Revolution, the availability of agricultural land and employment opportunities in the chicle and lumber industries attracted many people to a new frontier. This study explores the relationships among migration, the formation of multi-ethnic communities, introduction of new technologies, town planning, and architectural styles to account for the genesis of a distinctive 'frontier' style within a Maya community in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys the uses of two ancient Greek terms --αἰὠvıoς and ἀΐδıς--commonly translated as "eternal", from their earliest occurrences in poetry and pre-Socratic philosophy down through the Septuagint and the New Testament, and culminating in the Christian theologian Origen. It examines the rise of the idea of infinitely extended time (generally denoted by ἀΐδıς, and Plato's innovative introduction of a concept of a timeless eternity (sometimes described as αἰὠvıoς). It is argued that in the Greek Bible, αἰὠvıoς, as opposed to ἀΐδıς, does not necessarily denote absolute eternity. Since only αἰὠvıoς, and never ἀΐδıς, is applied to punishment in the afterlife, Origen could find support in this usage for his doctrine of universal salvation and the finite duration of hell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of papers related to the Maya people which include the characteristics of the architectural arrangements in Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, the acoustic effects in archaeological sites and the studies on elderly mesoamerican people, particularly prehispanic Mayan women.

The article presents abstracts of papers on the Mayan civilization, including those about the way dynasties was stabilised around the seventh century B.C., an analysis of jeroglyphic inscription of the jadeite earspools that were part of the funerary regalia of the Palenque ruler K'inich Janahb' Pakal and archaeological evidence for a Mayan community in Cuello, Belice.

The article presents abstracts of papers related to the Maya people which include the rulers' use of god's appellatives as part of their personal names, the monuments of Bonampak in Mexico and the use of alcohol, tobacco and cacao in the agrarian rituals performed by the contemporary yucatec maya.