Please join us for a conversation about After the Broken Spears: The Aztecs in the Wake of Conquest, an anthology co-edited by Camilla Townsend, Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers–New Brunswick, and Josh Anthony, PhD Candidate in History at Rutgers–New Brunswick and Dissertation Fellow at the McNeil Center at UPenn. The event will take place on Friday, February 20, 2026, from 1:00 to 2:30 PM, as a hybrid event with lunch included, at the Academic Building–West Wing, Seminar Room 6051, in New Brunswick, NJ. Comments will be provided by Dr. Anthony Meyer (Institute of Fine Arts, NYU).
In After the Broken Spears, the contributors examine the period following Hernando Cortés’s conquest of Tenochtitlan in 1521, when the Aztec empire became the center of the largest European colony in the Americas. The book challenges the long-held assumption that Indigenous people’s personal experiences of this era are inaccessible, drawing on Native sources to show how Nahuas and other Indigenous peoples understood and survived the decades after conquest. The volume offers fresh perspectives on early Mexican history and the enduring afterlives of colonialism.
Attendees and readers are encouraged to purchase the book in advance. After the Broken Spears will be published in paperback by Oxford University Press in December 2025. A 30% discount is available using the promotion code AUFLY30 when ordering through the publisher’s website.
More information and RSVP here
