Her current research projects focus on narratives of first contacts between indigenous and Hispanic peoples on Mexico’s northern frontiers, a study of the visual and verbal construction of frontier martyrdom in colonial Latin America and the representation of the natural world in Jesuit missionary discourse. In addition to publishing widely in these fields, she has translated and edited a number of contemporary Mexican and Peruvian literary texts, including A Rosario Castellanos Reader (University of Texas Press, 1988) and Five Quechua Poets (The American Society/Latin American Literary Review Press, 1998). She is co-translator of Andrés de Ribas, S. J., History of the Triumphs of Our Holy Faith(1645) (University of Arizona Press, 1999), a history of the Jesuit missionary enterprise in northwestern Mexico, 1590-1645, and she is a contributing editor toThe Handbook for Latin American Studies (Library of Congress)."
"Cartography and the natural world in Historia de los Triumphos de la Santa Fe by Andrés Pérez de Ribas, S.J. (1645)."
National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship Project -2003-04
Transformative Frontiers: Martyr Narratives and Ritual Performance on Missionary Frontiers in Northwest New Spain (1530-1645).
A study of the multivalent nature of early Franciscan and Jesuit martyrdom and the counter responses of indigenous ritual performance in terms of their roles in the formation of frontier culture in colonial Mexico, as narrated in textual, visual and performance texts of the time. It includes chapters on the Child Martyrs of Tlaxcala (1527 and 1529); the early Franciscan martyrs during the Mixton War in Nueva Galicia (1540); and Jesuit martyrs in the Acaxee Rebellion (1601-02) and the Jesuit martyrs at the failed mission in northern Virginia and in Florida in the 1570's; during the Acaxee Rebellion in 1601-02 and in the Tepehuan Revolt in 1615. Source texts are the accounts from Motolonía; Mendieta, Pérez de Ribas and judicial and military documents of the period.
Mapping Discourses on the Northern Frontier: 1527-1583.
A collection of essays that examine the early relaciones or reports of the first Spanish and Amerindian encounters on the northern borderlands of New Spain as textual sites of cultural interaction and what they can tell us about the writing of cultural identities, differences and change on volatile frontier spaces of early contact of explorers, missionaries and military with indigenous peoples in 16th century Mexico. Focus on the relaciones of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Fray Marcos de Niza, Fernando de Alarcón, Pedro de Castañeda, Hernán Gallegos and Diego Pérez de Luxán, a Nahuatl report of the Chichimeca War and the Memorial of Castaño y Sosa, during the first fifty years of frontier contact in New Spain from Sinaloa in northwestern Mexico to the Hopi towns in present-day northern Arizona.
The Reports of Gallegos and Luxán on New Mexico / Las relaciones de Hernán Gallegos y Diego Pérez de Luxán, 1581-1583.
Bilingual edition of unpublished Spanish manuscripts of a report and diary of the Rodríguez-Chamuscado and Espejo expeditions to the Pueblo and Hopi towns in New Mexico and Arizona. 1581-1583 .
Narratives of First Contact on the Northern Frontier of New Spain: 1527-1583.
A bilingual edition of the Reports of the Gallegos and Espejo expeditions to New Mexico, 1581-1583. Funded by The Recovery Project grant from the U. of Houston.
Frontier Missionary Enterprises in Northwest New Spain, 16th and 17th century, including a critical, annotated English translation of Andres Pérez de Ribas, Historia de los triumphos de la Santa Fe (1645), University of Arizona Press, 1999, and the construction of martyrdom in Jesuit discourse.
Rosario Castellanos: (Mexico 1925-1974): Her critical and cultural discourse.
