NASA History Community:
                Some of you may want to register for this free, interesting NASM Webinar.  Please contact Dr. Matt Shindell with any questions and feel free to forward to others who may be interested.  Thanks
 a lot and happy new year.
                -Steve
 
Stephen Garber
(he/him)
NASA History Division
Office of Communications
NASA Headquarters
Mary W. Jackson Building, Room 5P25
Washington, DC 20546
202-358-0385
http://history.nasa.gov
 
 
 
                
From: "Shindell, Matt" <ShindellM@si.edu>
Date: Tuesday, January 3, 2023 at 3:10 PM
To: "Shindell, Matt" <ShindellM@si.edu>
Cc: "Russo, Carolyn" <RussoC@si.edu>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] January 19 - "Calculating Brilliance" with Gerardo Aldana y Villalobos
 

 
Seminar on Contemporary Science, Technology, and Culture
 
Thursday, January 19, 4:00 pm ET
 
The 2023 Contemporary History Seminar begins on
Thursday, January 19th on Zoom. Register
 in advance. The speaker will be:
 
Gerardo Aldana y Villalobos
Professor of Chicana/o Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara
 
Calculating Brilliance: An Intellectual History of Mayan Astronomy at Chich’en Itza
 

 
Near the Great Ball Court of Chich’en Itza, within the interior of the Lower Temple of the Jaguar, a mural depicts a female Mayan astronomer known as K'uk'ul Ek' Tuyilaj. Her brilliant discovery,
 recorded in the Venus Table of the Dresden Codex, reverberated through Mayan science. But it has remained obscured to modern eyes. Weaving together archaeology, mathematics, history, and astronomy, Gerardo Aldana y Villalobos’s new book,
Calculating Brilliance, critically reframes science in the pre-Columbian world. He reexamines the historiography of the Dresden Codex and contextualizes the Venus Table relative to other Indigenous literature. From a perspective anchored to Indigenous
 cosmologies and religions, Aldana y Villalobos delves into how we may understand Indigenous science and discovery—both its parallels and divergences from modern globalized perspectives of science.
Calculating Brilliance brings different intellectual threads together across time and space, from the Classic to the Postclassic, the colonial period to the twenty-first century to offer a new vision for understanding Mayan astronomy. Join the seminar
 for a presentation by the author and a discussion of this important new book.
 
For further information, please contact Matt Shindell at 202-633-5897;
ShindellM@si.edu
 
Please register
 in advance for this talk. 
 
Before the talk, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. The link you receive should not be shared with others; it is unique to you.
 
 
| 
 | Matt Shindell, Ph.D.
(he/him)  /  Space
 History Curator SMITHSONIAN’S NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM o:202-633-5897  /  shindellm@si.edu AIRANDSPACE.SI.EDU |