Garry Sparks has published his second book, Rewriting Maya Religion: Domingo de Vico, K’iche’ Maya Intellectuals, and the Theologia Indorum. More information can be found at the University Press of Colorado.
Through sixteenth-century indigenous-language sources, the book traces how the first missionaries to the Maya repurposed native religious ideas, myths, and rhetoric in their efforts to translate Christianity and how, in this wake, Maya elites began to write their own religious texts, like the Popol Vuh. This ethnohistory of religion critically reexamines the role and value of indigenous authority during the period of first contact for not only a transmission history but also a reception history of Christianity to the Americas and the reconfiguration of Native American religions.
Prof. Sparks has also been recently awarded an American Academy of Religion Collaborative International Research Grant for 2020 for further critical translation of the Theologia Indorum from Mayan language manuscripts.
October 16, 2020
