History of Art and Architecture

Catherine Nuckols is an International Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History of Art and Architecture and at the Cogut Institute. Her research examines the visual nature of ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing and how the study of its non-linguistic features can lead to new insights on visual forms of communication. Her book project, Full-Figure Glyphs: Iconicity, Figuration, and Tz’ihb in Ancient Maya Inscriptions, examines a subset of visually complex Maya hieroglyphs, the scribal workshops that created them, and the implications of this highly iconic script for our understanding of ancient Maya perceptions of “writing” and “art.” Nuckols received her joint PhD in Art History and Latin American Studies from Tulane University; she also holds an MA in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Latin American Studies from Brigham Young University. Her research has been supported by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art's Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Casa Herrera, the Tinker Foundation, and the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University. Her work has been published in Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas and MEXICON, with upcoming publications in other presses.