Unholy Pedagogy: Local Knowledge, Indigenous Intermediaries, and the Lessons from Spanish Colonial Learningscapes, 1400–1650.
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Date
2019-09-18
Authors
Fitzgerald, Joshua
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
To the present, histories about Spanish colonial education in the Americas have revealed surprisingly little in the way of indigenous perspectives on transatlantic indoctrination and local identity, and some might assume that European educational traditions dramatically uprooted Nahua culture and inserted a foreign one in the wake of systematic conversion efforts led by Christian priests. But the persistence to the present of pre-colonial traditions signifies that knowledge and culture were not uprooted, and the premise neglects the dynamic ways in which Nahuas of the sixteenth century manifested local identity under a colonial regime. Either point sparks an important historical question: how did indigenous students influence education under Spanish colonialism at the local or regional scale? To answer this question, this study will seek out evidence about pre- and colonial schooling, locate the material and psychosocial realities as they changed over time, and, significantly, develop a path forward to better understanding of Nahua community sense of place and local attachment. Its findings help to tell a more wholistic and nuanced account about local identity among Nahua communities in the intervalley region of Central Mexico. Rather than pin the discourse solely to the alphabetic texts, which were for the most part authored by European educators, this study is distinct because it builds upon ethnohistorical methodology, one that compliments Nahuatl and Spanish translations with a rich variety of visual and material culture (art, architecture, pictorial manuscripts, maps, and other materials) created by indigenous hands. It investigates complex ideas and themes, including place-identity formation and perseverance, the Spanish “spiritual conquest,” memory studies, and the transference of knowledge between cultures. One of Unholy Pedagogy’s core arguments is that indigenous learning modalities and sense of place were inextricably paired, and the combination of these produced mutual misunderstandings and mixed meanings between Native learners and Spanish educators. Therefore, this dissertation makes a unique contribution to the analysis of colonial-era religious education studies, place-identity research, and the history of learning science, and its approach recovers a more diverse and multifaceted vision of transcultural processes.
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Keywords
architecture, catholicism, education, mesoamerica, nahuatl, place