Associate Professor, Ph.D.

Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican Art

Department of Art & Art History

Curriculum Vitae

juliaguernsey@mail.utexas.edu

Website

- Office: ART 3.426

- Phone: +1 512-471-5850

- Mail Code: - D1300

Associate Professor Julia Guernsey’s research and publications focus on the Late Preclassic period in Mesoamerica, which followed the decline of the great Olmec civilization and preceded the rise of Classic Maya civilization. Her research focuses specifically on how rulership was encoded into a visual vocabulary during this period, and how this symbolic vocabulary was shared across ethnic and linguistic boundaries. She is also project iconographer for the La Blanca Archaeological Project, where she continues to participate in on-going excavations and analysis of materials from this Middle Preclassic site on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997. Her book, Ritual and Power in Stone: The Performance of Rulership in Mesoamerican Izapan-Style Art, was published by the University of Texas Press in 2006. Her most recent research appears, or is in press, in the journals Antiquity, Ancient America, Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, Mexicon, and the Journal of Latin American Lore, in several edited volumes and proceedings, including Memorias de la Segunda Mesa Redonda Olmeca, and the XIX Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2005 and 2007, as well as the exhibition catalogue Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship.