Dr. Michael Carrasco
Assistant Professor,
Pre-Columbian art, architecture, and Maya Epigraphy
PhD University of Texas at Austin
Directive status: Doctoral
406 Fine Arts Building
(850) 645-2536
mcarrasco@fsu.edu
Website: Unaahil B'aak: The Temples of Palenque
Michael D. Carrasco's areas of specialization include the art history of Mesoamerica, Maya epigraphy, and Yucatec Mayan. He teaches courses on the art and culture of the indigenous Americas as well as courses on image theory and the intersection of anthropology and art history. Additionally, he has taught courses on Maya epigraphy for Wesleyan University, the University of North Carolina and Duke Summer Yucatec Program, and at the Maya Meetings at the University of Texas, Austin.
He is currently working on two book-length projects and an edited volume on Maya verbal arts. The first is tentatively entitled Of How they Pleased the Hearts of their Gods, and explores issues of divine embodiment, cognition in the context of ritual and icon use among the Maya and other Mesoamerican cultures. The second, From the Stone Painter’s Brush: An Anthology of Classic Maya Literature, (with Kerry M. Hull) presents translations of important texts from the corpus of Classic Maya inscriptions. The edited volume, Parallel Worlds: Genre, Discourse and Poetics in Contemporary, Colonial and Classic Maya Literature, brings together many of the leading scholars in the field of Maya literary studies to provide ways of approaching Classical Maya literature that are informed by the methods developed through the study of colonial and contemporary Maya literature.
Selected Publications
Books
Pre-Columbian Foodways: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Food, Culture, and Markets in Ancient Mesoamerica. (co-editor John E. Staller) Springer, 2009.
Articles
"The First-Person Independent Pronoun in Classic Ch'olan." (co-author Kerry Hull and Robert Wald) Mexicon, Vol. XXXI, N. 2 (April 2009).
Click here to view this article.
"The Changing Styles and Contexts of the Mask-Flange Iconographic Complex." Art for Archaeology's Sake: Material Culture and Style across the Disciplines, Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Chacmool Conference, University of Calgary, Canada, 2005.
Mak-“Portal” Rituals Uncovered: An Approach to Interpreting Symbolic Architecture and the Creation of Sacred Space Among the Maya. In Continuity and Change: Maya Religious Practices in Temporal Perspective. (co-author Kerry Hull) 5th European Maya Conference, University of Bonn, Germany Dec. 2000. Acta Mesoamericana, Vol. 14, pp.131-142.
"The Cosmogonic Symbolism of the Corbeled Vault in Maya Architecture." (co-author Kerry Hull) Mexicon,
Volume XXIV, No. 2 (April 2002).
Click here to view this article.
"The Incensario Stands of Palenque." Pre-Columbian
Art Research Institute Newsletter 25:9 San Francisco, 1998.
Lecture Courses Offered
- Great Traditions in Mesoamerican Art and Culture
- The Art and Culture of the Maya
- The Art, Architecture, and Cultures of Central Mexico from the Postclassic (AD 1200) to the 16th Century
Graduate Seminars Offered
- Representation and Reality: Towards an Anthropological Theory of Art
- Writing and Semasiographic Systems in Mesoamerica
- Pre-Columbian Foodways