Gods Seen and Heard: Speech and Image in Classic Maya Mythohistory
Morgan Clark’s project explores speech and image in Classic Maya mythohistorical narratives. These narratives—which feature scenes of dialogue between supernatural figures—are typically framed by a short historical text naming the owner of the inscribed object and, occasionally, its scribe. This reference to owners and scribes links the world of living actors to the ahistorical supernatural world. The currency and intimacy of this effect is strengthened through reading the quoted speech of supernatural figures and seeing depictions of them speaking. Clark argues that the way these factors affect the consumption, recitation, and circulation of these mythohistorical narratives is the product of regionally and temporally specific political aims to manufacture credibility and to link specific historical people to sacred knowledge and authority.
Professional Biography
Morgan Clark is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Brown University, where she also completed her MA degree. She has held a Presidential Fellowship at Brown for three years. Her BA degree from The University of Texas at Austin is in Anthropology, Linguistics, and English literature. The topics of her dissertation research best reflect her primary research interests, but she has also been analyzing LiDAR data of the greater Naranjo, Guatemala area since 2021, and she recently completed two seasons of field/lab work (2021–2022) at La Cuernavilla, a large Maya hilltop fortification in Guatemala. Her research has been supported by various grants from institutions at Brown.