On September 27th, Mariana Bono and students in her new course SPA 255 The Making of a Language. Spanish Then and Now visited Special Collections to engage in a critical lexicography exercise that taught them how to approach historic written records and to appreciate how Spanish served both as an instrument for national consolidation in Spain and a tool for imperial expansion in the Americas. The exercise involved examining first editions of bilingual dictionaries and grammars of Castilian and of various indigenous languages of the Americas (including Nahuatl, Huastec, Mapudungun, and Guaraní) dating back to the 16th century, as well as treatises and policy documents that center the role of language in the colonial enterprise.

Earliest among the items reviewed by students was Alonso de Molina’s Aqui Comiença vn Vocabulario en la Lengua Castellana y Mexicana (Mexico City, 1555), the first Spanish-Nahuatl dictionary and work of lexicography ​to be printed in America. Compiled to assist in the proselytization of indigenous populations, it shows how essential was the learning of indigenous languages during the early stages of the colonization.

Last week, the Library was fortunate to receive a visit from PLAS Visiting Scholar Agustín Díez Fischer and students participating in his seminar Art Archives in Latin America to view and discuss more than twenty items related to Chile’s Escena de Avanzada, most of which are part of the Rare Books section of the Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology. 

The ample selection of exhibition catalogs, brochures and books by and about experimental artists such as Carlos Altamirano, Eugenio Dittborn, Paz Errázuriz, Alfredo Jaar, Ronald Kay, Carlos Leppe, and Nelly Richard, among others, allowed students to look closely at and discuss how, after the Military Coup of 1973, Chilean artists reconceptualized traditional artistic practices, languages, techniques and genres.