Angélica Afanador-Pujol

Angélica J. Afanador-Pujol specializes in the art, material culture, and architecture of the Indigenous people of Ancient and Colonial Latin America. Professor Afanador-Pujol’s research interests include Indigenous agency and the social function of art as it intersects with race and ethnic relations, justice, political interests, and consumption in early sixteenth-century Mexico.

Her first book, The Relación de Michoacán (1539-1541) and the Politics of Representation in Colonial Mexico (UT Press, 2015), examines the relationship between text and images in the representation of political, factional, land and judicial conflicts in the images of the 16-century manuscript known as "The Relación de Michoacán." More recently, she co-authored the book Don Antonio Huitzimengari: Información y Vida de un Noble Indígena en la Nueva España del siglo XVI (UNAM & UMSNH, 2019) with historian J. Ricardo Aguilar about an Indigenous governor and patron of the arts from Michoacán, Mexico.  Some of her other publications in English and Spanish include the essays entitled “The Tree of Jesse and the ‘Relación de Michoacán’: Mimicry and Identity in Colonial Mexico” (Art Bulletin, December 2010); “J. Benedict Warren y su impacto en estudios michoacanos en Estados Unidos (In Abriendo Caminos: El legado de J. Benedict Warren a la historia y a la lengua de Michoacán, 2012); and “Let the Waters and the Pigments Flow on These Pages: Making and Emending Landscape in the Relación de Michoacán” (In Manuscript Cultures of Colonial Mexico and Peru: New Questions and Approaches, 2014). In 2020, she served as a contributing editor for the Library of Congress’ Handbook of Latin American Studies, Volume 74 (UT Press, 2020). She is currently working on representations of food and conquest in ancient and early colonial Latin America.  

Prior to joining the School of Art at Arizona State University, Professor Afanador-Pujol served as assistant professor of art history at the University of Minnesota (2008-2014); held an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/ACLS Recent Doctoral Recipients Fellowship at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University (2009-2010); and was a teaching fellow at the Department of Art History, University of California Los Angeles (U.C.L.A., 2005); an associate instructor, Department of the History of Art, U.C. Riverside (2002-2003); and adjunct faculty, at the School of Art, University of Arizona (2001).  

She is also the recipient of several research grants, including an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2007-2008); and a UC MEXUS, Dissertation Research Grant (2005-2007).

​Among the courses she has taught are seminars such as (Mis)Representing Justice: Art, Law and Censorship; Art, Food, and Consumption; Art of the Native Peoples of Latin America: Spoken Word and Painted Texts; Colonial Cultures and Identities (co-taught). Her upper and lower division lectures range from Aztec Art and Empire; Art of the Inka and their Ancestors; and Word and Image/Science and Art in the Age of Trans-Atlantic Exploration (co-taught) to Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas; Mexico On My Mind; and Survey of Aztec, Maya, and Inka Art.