About 60 years after the Spanish invasion and conquest, a group of Aztec intellectuals gathered in Mexico City, capital of New Spain, and set about compiling an extensive book of miscellanea known today as the Codex Mexicanus. The Codex includes records pertaining to the Aztec and Christian calendars and European medical astrology, as well as an extensive history of the Aztec empire. By providing an overview of the manuscript, this talk will reveal how the Codex's seemingly disparate contents come together to communicate an identity for New Spain as a modern Christian nation founded on an Aztec past of great renown.

Dr. Diel teaches courses on the art of the ancient Americas and colonial Latin American art at Texas Christian University. Her research focuses on Aztec codices created after the conquest. She has published two books, both with the University of Texas Press: The Tira de Tepechpan: Negotiating Place under Aztec and Spanish Rule (2008) and The Codex Mexicanus: A Guide to Life in Late Sixteenth-Century New Spain (2018), which was awarded the Roland H. Bainton Book Prize in Art and Music History by the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference in 2019. She has also published a number of scholarly articles and essays focused on Aztec pictorial manuscripts and the role of women in Aztec history. Her latest project considers the experiences of women during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Diel, who received her Ph.D. from Tulane University, New Orleans, has received fellowships from the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.