The Department welcomes Jessica Stair, a Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow. She will teach HIAA 1631, "Authority, Identity, and Visual Culture in Colonial Latin America."

Professor Stair earned her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and her research focuses on indigenous artistic and scribal practices of colonial Mexico. In particular, she is interested in the relationship of images to textual forms, the mobilization of pictures to assert the identity and authority of their creators and beholders, and the ways in which artistic conventions and traditions change over time. Her current research centers on the transformation of pictorial forms across genre and media within late-colonial, indigenous documents known as primordial titles.