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Dr Joshua Fitzgerald 

Year started

2020

Subject

Art History

Fellow Type

Junior Research Fellows,

Joshua Fitzgerald is a Junior Research Fellow in History and Art History, and he specializes in the science of learning and material culture relating to Mesoamerica (especially the “Aztecs”) and Colonial Latin American history. In June 2019, he received his PhD and certification in Museum Studies from the University of Oregon (UO), and he recently finished a Getty Foundation internship with the Getty Research Institute (GRI) where he helped to develop digital scholarship for the Florentine Codex Initiative and was the GRI co-organizer for a teacher training workshop “The Florentine Codex: Teaching the Conquest of Mexico through Indigenous Eyes” with the UCLA Latin American Institute. Joshua’s research is based on written sources, art and architecture created by Nahuas (speakers of Nahuatl), and his interests include place-identity theory, human-animal lore, natural science, and cultural history relating to the early transatlantic world. His primary focus explores pre-colonial modes of learning, and, beginning with European contact, how those modalities adapted to novel education systems introduced by doctrinaires. His first book project offers new insights about cultural imperialism by examining learning environments, which, in situ, were primed for place-based pedagogy that helped to preserve of local heritage alongside Spanish-Catholic catechism.