{"id":4834,"date":"2020-07-27T09:20:07","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T16:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arthistory.ucr.edu\/?page_id=4834"},"modified":"2025-12-03T10:56:57","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T18:56:57","slug":"savannah-esquivel","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/arthistory.ucr.edu\/faculty\/savannah-esquivel\/","title":{"rendered":"Savannah Esquivel"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Assistant Professor<\/span>\"Savannah<\/p>\n<\/i> 225 Arts Building
\n<\/i> (951) 827-4634
\n<\/i> savannah.esquivel@ucr.edu<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

\n
Biography\/Education<\/strong><\/span>Research\/Teaching<\/strong><\/span>Selected Publications<\/strong><\/span><\/div>
\nBiography<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
\n

Savannah Esquivel specializes in the art and material culture of the Hispanic Americas, with a particular emphasis on Mexico. Her research focuses on the artistic and sociopolitical interventions made by Nahua communities within Christian religious spaces in colonial Mexico. Current article-length projects investigate the soundscape of Franciscan convent churches, landscape mural painting and the ecological impacts of settler-colonialism in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley, and discourses of Indigenous presence and absence in Spanish colonial sources and art historical methodologies. She is at work on a book-length project, tentatively titled Indigenous Insiders: Sights, Sounds, and Cross-Cultural Interactions in Mexico\u2019s Early Colonial Monasteries<\/i>, which examines how Indigenous communities used Franciscan convents\u2014 their imagery, sounds, spaces, and institutional structure\u2014to challenge settler-colonialism in colonial Mexico.<\/p>\n

Esquivel is a Faculty Affiliate of the UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. In 2023-2024, Esquivel will be the Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellow in The Huntington-UC Program for the Advancement of the Humanities, an innovative partnership designed to advance the humanities at public universities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Education<\/strong><\/p>\n

2020 University of Chicago, Art History
\n2011 University of Illinois at Chicago, Art History
\n2009 University of Iowa, Art History and Religious Studies<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Areas of Specialization and Primary Research\/Teaching Interests:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Art and material culture of the ancient and colonial Americas, with a focus on architecture and mural painting in contexts of religious conversion in Mexico. Indigenous studies; Nahuatl language and culture; art and ecology; mendicant art and architecture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Monograph<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIndigenous Insiders: Sights, Sounds, and Cross-Cultural Interactions in Mexico\u2019s Early Colonial Monasteries\u201d (in preparation).<\/p>\n

Articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPipes, Pigments, and Posas: Tapping into the Divine in Early Colonial Mexican Architecture,\u201d postmedieval<\/i>, special issue on \u201cTechnique: Alternate Histories of Expertise and Experiment,\u201d ed. Jennifer Jahner and Jessica Rosenberg (2025).
\n<\/strong>https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1057\/s41280-025-00382-1<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cMonasteries, Murals, and Environmental Degradation in Early Colonial Mexico,\u201d The Art Bulletin <\/i>107, no. 2, 83\u2013115. DOI: 10.1080\/00043079.2025.2505393<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaunted Monasteries: Troubling Indigenous Erasure in Early Colonial Mexican Architecture” Arts 13, no. 2: 61 (2024). Recipient of the Association for Latin American Art 2024 Article Award
\nhttps:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/arts13020061 <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHearing and Seeing Indigenous Presence in a Colonial Mexican Church (Tecamachalco, 1562),\u201d in Soundscapes of the Early Modern Iberian Empires<\/a>, ed. V\u00edctor Sierra Matute (Abingdon, England; New York, NY: Routledge: 2024). <\/p>\n

\u201cMore Mortar, More Problems: Ecologies of Renaissance Classicism in Sixteenth-Century Mexico\u201d (in preparation).<\/p>\n

\u201cTaking Camaxtli Prisoner: Spoliated Monuments and Captive Art in Early Colonial Mexico\u201d (in preparation)<\/p>\n

Academic Book Reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cNew Spain’s Second City: Architecture and Urbanism of Puebla de los \u00c1ngeles,\u201d Architectural Histories <\/i>(2024). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.16995\/ah.15240<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Review of Rosario I. Granados, ed. Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America<\/em> (University of Texas Press and Blanton Museum of Art, 2023) for caa.reviews<\/em>. Published online Aug. 30, 2023. http:\/\/www.caareviews.org\/reviews\/4146<\/a><\/p>\n

Review of Tony Ballantyne, Lachy Paterson & Angela Wanhalla, eds. Indigenous Textual Cultures: Reading and Writing in the Age of Global Empire<\/em> (Duke, 2020) for Native American and Indigenous Studies<\/em> 9, no. 2 (Fall 2022): 195-197.<\/p>\n

Review of Ana Pulido Rull, Mapping Indigenous Lands: Native Land Grants in Colonial New Spain: Native Land Grants in New Spain<\/em> (University Oklahoma Press, 2020) for Ethnohistory <\/em>69, no. 3 (2022): 366\u2013367.<\/p>\n

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