Course Details

This course examines the challenges historians face when writing the history of the Aztecs (Mexica), a people whose codices, or written pictorial records of their past, were largely destroyed by the Spanish after colonization in 1521. In asking how historians investigate and interpret the histories of populations when traditional forms of primary source evidence are unavailable, we will complicate our thinking about how historical knowledge is produced. In the process, we will also examine the broader history of the Aztec Empire and the Spanish colonial society that formed in its aftermath. Particular attention will be paid to notions of religion, cosmology, and daily life among the Aztecs.