Paper Topics | Spring 2025 | Paper 5
Due Saturday, Februrary 15, 5:00 p.m., to your conference leader
Target length: 1,400-1,600 words
Choose one of the following topics:
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James Maffie introduces the concepts of teotl, inamic relationships, and balancing as central to Mexica cosmology. Choose one of these concepts and analyze how you see it at work in one of these three myths: “The Five Suns or Cosmic Ages,” “The Cosmic Ages, the Rescuing of the Precious Bones and the Discovery of Corn,” or “The Birth of Huitzilopochtli.” What insight does the concept provide about the depiction of creation and destruction? Make sure that you explain the concept by drawing on Maffie’s lecture (January 29) before you use it to analyze the poem.
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Compare and contrast the representation of Tenochtitlan in the frontispiece of the Codex Mendoza and the Nuremberg Map. What similarities and differences do you observe in the portrayal of the city’s layout, cosmology, and water systems? How do these similarities and differences reflect the preservation and/or erasure of indigenous knowledge? How do these renderings establish power dynamics, shape perceptions of the city, and reflect competing ways of understanding space and the environment?
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Compare and contrast the three different versions (Spanish, Nahuatl, and pictographic) of a single episode in the Florentine Codex. Focusing on one numbered chapter from Book 12, do close readings that consider how each version conveys the events. What rhetorical choices (e.g., diction, perspective, level and type of detail, explanation of causes, narrative focus) are deployed and how do they affect the depiction of the events? You might choose the section on festival of Huitzilopochtli (chapter 19), the battle between the Mexica and the Spaniards (chapter 21), the episode on Moctezuma’s death (chapter 23), or any other chapter from Book 12.