Kelly S Mcdonough
Biographic Data
| ID | 684505 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kelly S Mcdonough |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kelly S |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcdonough |
| SIGNATURE | MCDONOUGH K S |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8316-4400 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
What “counts” as reliable data? Nahua science and the tlapohualiztli (reading) of earth and sky
In this article, I explore what “counts” as reliable data in Nahua science by examining how Nahuas systematically perceive and interpret phenomena across earthly and celestial realms. Using sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Nahuatl and Spanish sources, I trace how Nahuas identify signs on the ground and in the sky to diagnose instability and guide collective action. Far from superstition, these interpretive practices form a rigorous analytical t…
Indigenous Technologies in the 1577 Relaciones geográficas of New Spain: Collective Land Memory, Natural Resources, and Herbal Medicine
This essay applies the analytic category of technologies proposed by historian Marcy Norton as complex systems of knowledges, practices, and products generated in specific social contexts to a study of the sixteenth-century bureaucratic surveys known as the Relaciones geográficas (RG) manuscripts. As a methodological intervention, the principal aim is to draw out the relatively understudied Indigenous knowledges and practices found throughout the…
Indigenous Rememberings and Forgettings: Sixteenth-Century Nahua Letters and Petitions to the Spanish Crown
Indigenous Rememberings and Forgettings:Sixteenth-Century Nahua Letters and Petitions to the Spanish Crown Kelly McDonough (bio) INDIGENOUS PEOPLE have always used the technologies available to them, old and new, to survive and thrive. It is not surprising, then, that the People took to alphabetic writing as soon as it was available to them, adopting and adapting it as best suited their own circumstances. While alphabetic writing isn't the only t…
Plotting Indigenous Stories, Land, and People: Primordial Titles and Narrative Mapping in Colonial Mexico
Spanish Crown policies of the colonial period in Mexico brought waves of forced indigenous reorganization (congregación) and legal processes of formalized distribution and titling of lands (composición). Both threatened and at times negated indigenous land rights and by extension corporate unity. At the same time, the Spanish court system provided a venue for indigenous peoples to advocate for themselves and contest encroachment of their territor…
Love’ Lost
This essay sheds light on the often contentious and always-in-process social relations among indigenous peoples of distinct social classes in colonial Mexico. Through a discourse analysis of one of Tlaxcala’s most important heritage sources, the Nahuatl-language annals of seventeenth-century Tlaxcalan noble and statesman Don Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza (Historia cronológica de la noble ciudad de Tlaxcala), I examine the subjective and obje…
Indigenous Intellectuals: Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Culture in Mexico and the Andes
Book Review| January 01 2016 Indigenous Intellectuals: Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Culture in Mexico and the Andes Indigenous Intellectuals: Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Culture in Mexico and the Andes. Edited by Ramos, Gabriela and Yannakakis, Yanna. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. vii + 323 pp., foreword, introduction, maps, photographs, bibliography, index. $89.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.) Kelly S. McDonough Kelly S. McDonough Searc…
Nahua and Maya Catholicisms: Texts and Religion in Colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan (review)
Reviews NAIS 1:2 FALL 2014 176 Reviews KELLY S. MCDONOUGH Nahua and Maya Catholicisms: Texts and Religion in Colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan by Mark Z. Christensen Stanford University Press, 2013 IN 1539 Don Carlos Ometochtzin, a native lord of the Nahua altepetl of Texcoco, was found guilty by the Spanish Inquisition as a “heretical dogmatizer” and subsequently burned at the stake. Among his missteps, Don Carlos purportedly had the (fatal) …
The Learned Ones: Nahua Intellectuals in Postconquest Mexico
"They were the healers, teachers, and writers, the "wise ones" of Nahuatl-speaking cultures in Mexico, remembered in painted codices and early colonial manuscripts of Mesoamerica as the guardians of knowledge. Yet they very often seem bound to an unrecoverable past, as stereotypes prevent some from linking the words "indigenous" and "intellectual" together. Not so, according to author Kelly S. McDonough, at least not for native speakers of Nahuat…
Indigenous Intellectuals in Early Colonial Mexico: The Case of Antonio del Rincón, Nahua Grammarian and Priest
Plotting Indigenous Stories, Land, and People: Primordial Titles and Narrative Mapping in Colonial Mexico
Spanish Crown policies of the colonial period in Mexico brought waves of forced indigenous reorganization (congregación) and legal processes of formalized distribution and titling of lands (composición). Both threatened and at times negated indigenous land rights and by extension corporate unity. At the same time, the Spanish court system provided a venue for indigenous peoples to advocate for themselves and contest encroachment of their territor…
Indigenous Technologies in the 1577 Relaciones geográficas of New Spain: Collective Land Memory, Natural Resources, and Herbal Medicine
This essay applies the analytic category of technologies proposed by historian Marcy Norton as complex systems of knowledges, practices, and products generated in specific social contexts to a study of the sixteenth-century bureaucratic surveys known as the Relaciones geográficas (RG) manuscripts. As a methodological intervention, the principal aim is to draw out the relatively understudied Indigenous knowledges and practices found throughout the…
Indigenous Intellectuals in Early Colonial Mexico: The Case of Antonio del Rincón, Nahua Grammarian and Priest
Love’ Lost
This essay sheds light on the often contentious and always-in-process social relations among indigenous peoples of distinct social classes in colonial Mexico. Through a discourse analysis of one of Tlaxcala’s most important heritage sources, the Nahuatl-language annals of seventeenth-century Tlaxcalan noble and statesman Don Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza (Historia cronológica de la noble ciudad de Tlaxcala), I examine the subjective and obje…
Indigenous Intellectuals in Early Colonial Mexico: The Case of Antonio del Rincón, Nahua Grammarian and Priest
Nahua and Maya Catholicisms: Texts and Religion in Colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan (review)
Reviews NAIS 1:2 FALL 2014 176 Reviews KELLY S. MCDONOUGH Nahua and Maya Catholicisms: Texts and Religion in Colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan by Mark Z. Christensen Stanford University Press, 2013 IN 1539 Don Carlos Ometochtzin, a native lord of the Nahua altepetl of Texcoco, was found guilty by the Spanish Inquisition as a “heretical dogmatizer” and subsequently burned at the stake. Among his missteps, Don Carlos purportedly had the (fatal) …
The Learned Ones: Nahua Intellectuals in Postconquest Mexico
"They were the healers, teachers, and writers, the "wise ones" of Nahuatl-speaking cultures in Mexico, remembered in painted codices and early colonial manuscripts of Mesoamerica as the guardians of knowledge. Yet they very often seem bound to an unrecoverable past, as stereotypes prevent some from linking the words "indigenous" and "intellectual" together. Not so, according to author Kelly S. McDonough, at least not for native speakers of Nahuat…
Love’ Lost
This essay sheds light on the often contentious and always-in-process social relations among indigenous peoples of distinct social classes in colonial Mexico. Through a discourse analysis of one of Tlaxcala’s most important heritage sources, the Nahuatl-language annals of seventeenth-century Tlaxcalan noble and statesman Don Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza (Historia cronológica de la noble ciudad de Tlaxcala), I examine the subjective and obje…
Indigenous Intellectuals: Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Culture in Mexico and the Andes
Book Review| January 01 2016 Indigenous Intellectuals: Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Culture in Mexico and the Andes Indigenous Intellectuals: Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Culture in Mexico and the Andes. Edited by Ramos, Gabriela and Yannakakis, Yanna. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. vii + 323 pp., foreword, introduction, maps, photographs, bibliography, index. $89.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.) Kelly S. McDonough Kelly S. McDonough Searc…
Plotting Indigenous Stories, Land, and People: Primordial Titles and Narrative Mapping in Colonial Mexico
Spanish Crown policies of the colonial period in Mexico brought waves of forced indigenous reorganization (congregación) and legal processes of formalized distribution and titling of lands (composición). Both threatened and at times negated indigenous land rights and by extension corporate unity. At the same time, the Spanish court system provided a venue for indigenous peoples to advocate for themselves and contest encroachment of their territor…
Indigenous Rememberings and Forgettings: Sixteenth-Century Nahua Letters and Petitions to the Spanish Crown
Indigenous Rememberings and Forgettings:Sixteenth-Century Nahua Letters and Petitions to the Spanish Crown Kelly McDonough (bio) INDIGENOUS PEOPLE have always used the technologies available to them, old and new, to survive and thrive. It is not surprising, then, that the People took to alphabetic writing as soon as it was available to them, adopting and adapting it as best suited their own circumstances. While alphabetic writing isn't the only t…
Indigenous Technologies in the 1577 Relaciones geográficas of New Spain: Collective Land Memory, Natural Resources, and Herbal Medicine
This essay applies the analytic category of technologies proposed by historian Marcy Norton as complex systems of knowledges, practices, and products generated in specific social contexts to a study of the sixteenth-century bureaucratic surveys known as the Relaciones geográficas (RG) manuscripts. As a methodological intervention, the principal aim is to draw out the relatively understudied Indigenous knowledges and practices found throughout the…
What “counts” as reliable data? Nahua science and the tlapohualiztli (reading) of earth and sky
In this article, I explore what “counts” as reliable data in Nahua science by examining how Nahuas systematically perceive and interpret phenomena across earthly and celestial realms. Using sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Nahuatl and Spanish sources, I trace how Nahuas identify signs on the ground and in the sky to diagnose instability and guide collective action. Far from superstition, these interpretive practices form a rigorous analytical t…
Latin American history and culture (9 works) · History (8 works) · Indigenous (7 works) · Archaeology (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Colonialism (5 works) · Historical Studies in Latin America (5 works) · Ancient history (4 works) · Ethnology (4 works)