Dr. Kelly McDonough
Interests
Critical Indigenous Studies; Latin American Literatures and Native Intellectual Histories, with emphasis on Mexico from Spanish colonialism to the present; Ethnohistory (Nahuatl Studies); Indigenous Science, Technology, and Society; Digital Humanities.
Biography
My research has focused on how Indigenous people—specifically Nahuas in Mexico—have utilized the written word to shape and respond to modernity as intellectuals within and beyond their communities of origin, from the colonial period through the present day. This broad research goal encompasses three primary fields: 1) Colonial/Postcolonial Latin American Literary/Cultural Studies; 2) Critical Indigenous Studies; and 3) Ethnohistory. In my first book, The Learned Ones: Nahua Intellectuals in Postconquest Mexico (University of Arizona Press, First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies, 2014), I explored specific cases of Nahua writing and intellectualism from the past five centuries in order to challenge the commonly held assumption that Indigenous intellectual activities in Latin America ceased or decreased dramatically with the advent of the European conquest and colonization. My current book in progress, Indigenous Science and Technologies of Mexico Past and Present, is a multi-disciplinary analysis of Nahua processes, networks, tools, and products related to diverse knowledge practices.