PETER B VILLELLA
Ph.D. in History (Latin America), UCLA, August 2009
M.A. in History (Latin America), UCLA, Spring 2005
B.A. in History and Spanish, University of Virginia, Summer 2001
Office: Bunche 7246
Fax: 310-206-7833
E-mail:
villella@ucla.edu
Field
Creolism and indigenism in colonial Mexico; legal rhetoric and political strategies among indigenous elites in Spanish America; Classical Nahuatl
Research Interests
"The True Heirs to Anahuac: Native Nobles, Creole Patriots, and the 'Natural Lords' of Colonial Mexico"
My dissertation traces the genealogy of certain themes of early Mexican patriotism -- such as a romantic vision of preconquest Mesoamerica -- to the legal and political rhetoric of some members of the displaced indigenous hereditary nobility, who often sought to re-establish their authority via the imperial justice system.
Grants and Awards
Helm Research Fellow, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 2010
Dissertation Writing Fellowship, 2008-09
Jose Amor y Vazquez Fellow, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, 2008
UCLA Latin American Institute Research Travel Grant, 2007
UCLA Graduate Summer Research Mentorship, 2004 and 2005
UCLA University Fellowship, 2003
Advisors
Dr. Kevin Terraciano (Chair)
Dr. Jose Moya
Dr. Anthony Pagden
Dr. Anna More
Conference Presentations
"Authority on Loan from the Past: the Salazars of Late-Colonial Tlaxcala," American Society for Ethnohistory, New Orleans, LA, October 2009
"Reclaiming Lordship: Caciques, Spanish Courts, and the Politics of Nostalgia in Eighteenth-Century Mexico," Conference on Latin American History, New York, NY, January 2009
"The Tapias of Queretaro and the Legacies of 'Peaceful' Conquest," American Society for Ethnohistory, Eugene, OR, November 2008
"The Fine Line Between Creole Patriotism and Spanish Triumphalism in Eighteenth-Century Mexico," John Carter Brown Library, Providence, RI, October 2008
"Legal Strategies of the Caciques at the Archivo General de la Nacion, Mexico City," UCLA Latin American Institute, Los Angeles, CA, May 2008
"They shall be pure and noble Indians, untainted by inferior idolatrous races": Aristocratic Discourses in Eighteenth-Century Indigenous Towns, American Society for Ethnohistory, Tulsa, OK, November 2007
"'Todos somos hijos de la iglesia': Mexican Indigenous History, Ladinos, and the Politics of Historical Ventriloquism in Granados y Galvez's 'Tardes americanas'", American Society for Ethnohistory, Williamsburg, VA, November 2006
"Seeing Double: Ideologies of Nobility and the Question of Recognition in New Spain, 1550 - 1700", Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies annual conference, Lexington, KY, April 2006
"Some Transcultural Strategies of the Native Nobility in Central and Southern Colonial Mexico", American Society for Ethnohistory annual conference, Santa Fe, NM, November 2005; New Voices Conference, Berkeley, CA, March 2006
"Haced que desde ninos se den a la virtud y trabajos: The Transcultural History of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl", Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies annual conference, Charleston, SC, March 2005
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