Giovanni Salazar Calvo, PhD Candidate in Hispanic and Cultural Studies in our department, has been accepted to the Research Methods Workshop for Early-Career Graduate Students, organized by the Newberry Library in Chicago. The workshop title is “New Spain at the Newberry Library: Demystifying Colonial Documents from the Ayer Collection,” which will be hosted on April 22, 2022 and led by Claudia Brittenham (University of Chicago) and Seonaid Valiant (Arizona State University). This opportunity will be funded by the Newberry Renaissance Consortium Grants, as Michigan State University is part of the Center for Renaissance Studies Consortium.

The Edward E. Ayer Collection of rare books and manuscripts contained 4,000 rare colonial documents from New Spain when it was given to the Newberry Library in 1911. The rich materials represented the early contacts between American Indians and Europeans, including sermons and dictionaries in indigenous languages handwritten by priests and pictorial court documents created by indigenous artists that contested land holdings in the Valley of Mexico. This one-day workshop will use the Ayer Collection and its history to discuss the historical migration of books in the global market. The workshop will also allow graduate students an opportunity to consult rare documents in the collection by learning how to read, contextualize, and interpret them.

Congratulations Giovanni!