LAS Colloquium focus: Devotional activities of K'iche' Maya women

Rhonda Taube, visiting professor in the Visual Arts Program at the University of San Diego, will discuss "Santiago Doesn’t Let His Women Go: Ritual and Devotional Activities Among K’iche’ Maya Women of Highland Guatemala" in a talk schedule at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 6, in Ladd Hall, Room 307. Free and open to the public, this LAS Colloquium Guest Lecture is co-sponsored with the departments of Anthropology and History, and the International Affairs and Gender Studies programs.

For many years, the “Day Keepers,” or religious specialists of the highland Guatemalan town of Momostenango, have been the focus of scholarly investigation due to their lasting commitment to traditionalism and adherence to the 260-day pre-Hispanic calendar and attendant rituals. However, another aspect of Momostenango society is its widespread interest in and reception of North American mass media and popular culture.

Taube will explore disfraces, “disguises,” a new genre of dances performed during the annual festival dedicated to the patron saint of the community, Santiago. These dances emphasize cultural change and innovation by featuring costumes derived from the U.S., such as Eddie Murphy, Batman, Harry Potter, and even Barack Obama. In this way, disfraces function as a strategy for managing and conceptualizing the effects of globalization. Taube will examine one costume in particular, Xena, Warrior Princess, and explore how it is being used to produce local meaning for women, an emerging group of performers previously excluded from public dance presentations. Among the K’iche’ Maya of Momostenango today, gender roles are in the process of shifting as women take on innovative ways of engaging society at large and make use of a format once considered appropriate only for men. Taube will discuss the multiple ways in which Xena “disguises” and performances operate as a site for the production of identity, signifying specific notions of gender and femininity and women’s place in post-war Guatemala.

An associate professor of art history at Riverside City College, Taube specializes in ancient, colonial, and contemporary Mesoamerican ceremonial pageantry and public performance in her research. She is currently conducting fieldwork in the highland Guatemala community of Momostenango to learn more about K’iche' Maya dance and ritual. One of her recent research topics involves the Maya response to neoliberalism, transnationalism, and globalization as enacted through community festivals and performance.

Taube earned an M.A. degree in pre-Columbian art history at Northern Illinois Univeristy and a Ph.D. in Latin American visual culture at the U.C.-San Diego Visual Arts Program.