This year’s symposium titled “Ixiktaak: Ancient Maya Women”, will focus on the significance of women in ancient Maya society. Recent research in the Maya area has dramatically enhanced our understanding of gender roles in ancient Maya society. The invited scholars have explored this topic from different disciplinary perspectives, including archaeology, iconography, physical anthropology, and epigraphy to illuminate the names, roles, lives, accomplishments, and practices of women in ancient Maya society.
The goal of this symposium is to showcase some of the most recent research in the Maya region that helps us examine and understand an array of topics such as, among others, women's daily lives, their role in power relations and regional politics, their relevance to and symbolic meaning within religion and ritual, and the economics of gender. New texts, new analytical techniques, and new discoveries discussed in these presentations will help us appreciate how complex and dynamic Classic Maya notions of gender were.
We have truly assembled a wonderful group of scholars in Maya studies whose different fields of expertise will allow us to muster as wide an array of evidence as is possible. Given how special this group of scholars is, please JOIN US!
Speakers
"The Body Within, the Body Without: Maya Figurines from Jaina and Beyond" -- Mary Miller
"Women's Lives, Women's Deaths" -- Vera Tiesler
"Women of the Copan North Group" -- Wendy Ashmore and Lisa DeLance
"The Margarita Tomb 20 Years Later: Revisiting the Roles of Royal Maya Women at Copan, Honduras" -- Ellen E. Bell
"The Life and Times of Lady Katun, Queen of Piedras Negras" -- David Stuart
"Sex and Gender in the City: Women, Political Complexity, and Ritual Activity at El Perú-Waka’" -- Michelle Rich
"Cosmopolitan Maya Women: Rethinking Interregional Interactions during the Late Classic to Postclassic periods (ca. 600-1521 CE)"-- Christina Halperin
"A Royal Meal: the Specialized Knowledge of Elite Maya Women" -- Traci Ardren
"Au-delà le Boudoir: Classic Maya Women in the Halls of Power" -- Dorie Reents-Budet and Ronald L. Bishop
"Representations of Women in the Books of Chilam Balam" -- Amy George-Hirons
"Introduction to the Ch’orti Maya Language" -- Jim Dugan
"Tulane Ceramics Workshop: Ceramics and Society in the Classic Maya Cities" -- Keith Eppich
"K'uhul Ixik: Sacred Ladies in Classic Maya Inscriptions" -- Simon Martin
"Of Goddesses and Gods: Creation Mythology in the Popol Wuj" -- Frauke Sachse