The Rutgers Center for Latin American Studies is pleased to invite you to a book launch for After the Broken Spears: The Aztecs in the Wake of Conquest (Oxford University Press, 2025), edited by Camilla Townsend (History, Rutgers) and Josh Anthony (History, Rutgers and McNeil Center, UPenn). This hybrid event will begin with comments from Dr. Anthony Meyer (Institute of Fine Arts, NYU), followed by a Q&A session that will include many of the contributing authors listed below. For those physically in attendance, lunch will be served, and a reception will follow. Participants are encouraged to use this webpage to read sample chapters and learn more about the book before attending the event. Please contact us
Event Details
Date: Friday, February 20th
Time: 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM
Location: Academic Building West 6051, 15 Seminary Place
Zoom registration here
Meet the Contributors
- Sandra Acocal (Tlaxcala Nahua) holds a doctorate in history and ethnohistory from the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH) of Mexico and is pursuing another doctorate at Rutgers. She has authored multiple publications on the history of Tlaxcala, including Mitos, tratamientos y rituales mortuorios de infantes entre los nahuas de San Pablo del Monte Cuauhtotoatla (Instituto Tlaxcalteca de la Cultura and Patrimonio Cultural y Programas, 2014).
- Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil (Mixe) is an activist, linguist, translator, writer, and member of Colegio Mixe. She holds a master’s degree in linguistics from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). She has written widely for a variety of platforms and published multiple collections of essays, including Ää: Manifiestos sobre la diversidad lingüística (Almadia, 2020) and, with editor Marc Delcan Albors, La sangre, la lengua y el apellido (Madreselva, 2021). She also published, as part of the “1521: Un Atado de Vidas” series, Tres Veces Tres. En Clave Malintzin; Nueve aproximaciones a su figura (UNAM, 2021).
- Josh Anthony is a doctoral candidate in history at Rutgers University and the 2025–2026 Richard S. Dunn dissertation fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation uses the Nahuatl annals to explore kinship and colonization in the region of Chalco from the fifteenth through the seventeenth century. He is currently working on an English translation of the Codex Otlazpan and Tepexic.
- Abelardo de la Cruz (Chicontepec Nahua) is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and collaborates with the Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ) and the University of Utah. He holds a PhD in anthropology from the University at Albany, SUNY. He has co-authored multiple monolingual Nahuatl books, including Citlalmachiyotl (with Louise M. Burkhart; University of Warsaw Faculty of “Artes Liberales” and IDIEZ, 2017), and is co-author, with David Tavárez, of a forthcoming critical edition of a Nahuatl commentary on the proverbs of Solomon.
- Eduardo de la Cruz (Chicontepec Nahua) is director of the Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ) and a PhD candidate in “Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw. He has authored multiple monolingual Nahuatl books, including Tototatahhuan Ininixtlamatiliz (2015) and Cenyahtoc cintli tonelhuayo: huahcapatl huan tlen naman (2017).
- Clio Isaacson is a doctoral candidate in history at Rutgers University and a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow. Her dissertation examines the treatment of women in the Nahuatl annals alongside the lives of Nahua women in early colonial Mexico. She is an instructor at Assumption College for Sisters in Denville, New Jersey.
- Travis Jeffres holds a PhD in American History from Rutgers University. He is the author of The Forgotten Diaspora: Mesoamerican Migrations and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (University of Nebraska Press, 2023), winner of the 2024 Robert M. Utley Prize and finalist for the 2024 David J. Weber Prize. He works as a historical consultant in Boise, Idaho.
- Selene Yuridia Galindo Cumplido (O’dam) is a writer, translator, anthropologist, cultural manager, and filmmaker from Durango, Mexico. In 2021, she founded the Circuito de Cine gio Arte Sierra O’dam (CCASO), an itinerant project focused on O’dam stories told by O’dam people. She received the Jury Prize from the Cátedra Bergman de Cine y Teatro at UNAM and DocsMX for the short film Luisa gu mejikan and was part of the editing and production team for Bucan tu rhachhidu’ (2023).
- Tara Malanga is an assistant teaching professor in the Writing Program at Rutgers University. Her most recent publication is The Book of the Dead: Huexotzinco, Mexico, 1619–1649 (Dumbarton Oaks, 2025). She is currently preparing a monograph on illness, death, and dying in the early colonial Nahua world.
- Baruc Martínez Díaz (Tláhuac Nahua) is a professor at the Colegio de Morelos and holds a doctorate in history from UNAM. His publications include In Atl, in Tepetl (2019), Tláhuac: atisbos históricos sobre un pueblo chinampero (2019), and Faustino Chimalpopoca Galicia: Un intelectual indígena en el México decimonónico (Ediciones Era, 2024).
- Celso Mendoza is an assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is preparing a full English translation of the Anales de Juan Bautista and a monograph on Nahua culture and resistance in Mexico City in the 1560s.
- Barbara E. Mundy is the Robertson Chair in Latin American Art at Tulane University. Her books include The Mapping of New Spain (1996) and The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City (2015), winner of the 2017 Bryce Wood Award. Her current project focuses on Indigenous bookmakers and the advent of print technology.
- Justyna Olko is a professor at the University of Warsaw and director of the Center for Research and Practice in Cultural Continuity. She is the lead researcher of the ERC-funded project Multilingual Worlds—Neglected Histories (2021–2026).
- Peter Bjorndahl Sorensen is an assistant professor of history at Hong Kong Baptist University. His forthcoming works include Five Nahuatl Songs About the Fall of Tenochtitlan and Nahua Singers: Celebrating Indigenous Empire in Sixteenth-Century Mexico City.
- Camilla Townsend is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University and coordinator of the Hemispheric Indigenous Studies Working Group. She is the author of Malintzin’s Choices (2006) and Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs (2019), winner of the 2020 Cundill History Prize.
More Information
Publisher website here
Companion website here
Sample ABS_prologue_and_introduction.pdf
Explore these links to learn more about the book, read sample chapters, and get additional context before attending the event.
We invite you to acquire your copy of After the Broken Spears: The Aztecs in the Wake of Conquest and take advantage of the 30% discount by ordering through Oxford University Press using the promotional code AUFLY30.