Applied Historical Research

An evolving digital museum platform designed to host rotating historical exhibitions. The current exhibit, Echoes of the Ancient World: How Greek Myths Survived, traces how stories of the Greek gods moved from oral performance to papyrus, manuscript, print, and modern retelling. The site combines historical research, artifact interpretation, exhibition writing, visual design, and interactive features, including a gallery hall, deity profiles, a map, a visitor guestbook, and a participatory offerings garden. 

Snippets of the site:

Final Outline

Colonialism and Indigenous Maya Knowledge Production

I. Introduction and central argument

• My project looks at Indigenous knowledge production during the Spanish conquest of the Maya and the colonial period that followed.

• I am not only interested in what Spanish colonizers recorded about Maya society. I also want to show how conquest changed who had the power to create, preserve, translate, and define knowledge.

• My main argument is that Spanish conquest changed Maya knowledge production through the destruction of books, the suppression of religious authority, and the introduction of new systems of writing and classification.

• Maya knowledge was not completely erased. Maya writers and ritual specialists adapted alphabetic writing and continued preserving historical, religious, medical, and political knowledge under colonial rule.

• The project will also show that knowledge was connected to class and authority. Before conquest, specialized writing and education were tied to scribes, priests, nobles, artists, and court officials. After conquest, Spanish missionaries claimed the power to decide which forms of knowledge were legitimate.

II. Public history format and audience

• I would present the project as an interactive digital exhibit.

• The audience would be students and general readers who may know about the military conquest of the Maya but know less about what happened to Maya books, language, education, religion, and historical memory.

• A digital exhibit would let visitors move through the history in a clear order while comparing colonial sources with Maya language sources.

• The exhibit could include manuscript images, short translated excerpts, captions, maps, and reflection questions. This would make the connections among race, class, religion, and colonial power easier to understand without turning the story into one of total cultural disappearance.

• This format is useful because it can show the differences between who created a source, who preserved it, and who later interpreted it.

III. Historical background

• I would begin with a short explanation of Maya knowledge before conquest.

• Maya writing, calendrical calculation, religious practice, artistic production, and historical memory required training and were connected to political and social authority.

• Julia Hendon will help explain status and class differences in Maya society.

• Takeshi Inomata will support the connection between specialized artistic and intellectual production and elite authority.

• Sarah Jackson will provide context for court hierarchy, political office, and the control of specialized knowledge.

• This background matters because I do not want to present Maya society as one unified group with equal access to education and authority.

IV. Primary source one

Diego de Landa, Relación de las cosas de Yucatán

• This sixteenth century Spanish text is the main primary source for the project.

• Landa describes Maya priests, books, writing, calendars, education, religious practices, and political life.

• He wrote through Christian and colonial assumptions, so I cannot treat him as a neutral observer.

• His involvement in the 1562 Maní auto da fé makes the source especially important. He participated in the destruction of Maya books and religious materials while later recording information about those same traditions.

• In the exhibit, I would place Landa’s description of Maya books beside his account of their destruction.

• I would use his attempted alphabet to ask whether translation can preserve knowledge while also placing it under colonial control.

V. Primary source two

The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel

• I would use Ralph L. Roys’s 1967 translated and edited edition published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

• The work is a colonial Yucatec Maya text written with the Roman alphabet. It contains historical accounts, prophecies, calendrical knowledge, religious material, and evidence of both Maya and Christian influence.

• This source complements Landa because it shifts the focus from a Spanish description of Maya knowledge to a text that preserves Maya historical and cultural perspectives.

• In the exhibit, I would use a manuscript image and a short translated passage concerning historical memory, prophecy, or the arrival of the Spanish.

• It would show that Maya writers used a writing system introduced during colonization for their own purposes rather than simply abandoning Indigenous knowledge.

VI. Primary source three

Ritual of the Bacabs

• I would use Ralph L. Roys’s 1965 edited and translated edition, Ritual of the Bacabs, A Book of Maya Incantations, published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

• The manuscript preserves Maya language healing and ritual incantations from the colonial period.

• It provides evidence of specialized medical, religious, and ritual knowledge that continued outside official Spanish accounts.

• This source complements Landa because he often classifies Maya religion as superstition or false belief, while the incantations preserve the language and internal logic of ritual practice.

• In the exhibit, I would include one translated healing passage and explain what it reveals about the authority of ritual specialists and the survival of Indigenous knowledge.

VII. Secondary sources and how they support the project

• William F. Hanks, Converting Words, will explain missionary language policy, translation, religious instruction, and Maya use of alphabetic writing.

• Matthew Restall, The Maya World, will provide evidence from Maya notarial records and help show that Maya people continued producing written documents under colonial rule.

• Julia Hendon, Takeshi Inomata, and Sarah Jackson will establish the relationship between class, status, education, political authority, and specialized knowledge before conquest.

• Together, these sources will keep the project from relying only on Landa and will place all three primary sources within a larger history of Maya knowledge production.

VIII. Race and class

• The project connects to race by showing how Spanish colonial authority placed Christian and European knowledge above Indigenous knowledge.

• Missionaries gained the power to condemn Maya practices, destroy materials, translate languages, and decide which information would enter the written colonial record.

• The project connects to class by showing that knowledge production was already shaped by hierarchy within Maya society.

• Scribes, priests, nobles, artists, and court officials had access to forms of training and authority that were not equally available to everyone.

• After conquest, Indigenous people also experienced colonial racial hierarchy, but Maya communities continued to contain internal differences in status, wealth, and political power.

• I also want to show people to not present Maya people as either one social class or only as passive victims.

IX. Proposed exhibit sections

• Opening panel introducing Indigenous knowledge production during conquest

• Maya knowledge and authority before conquest

• Destruction of books and the Maní auto da fé

• Landa’s account and the contradiction between recording and destroying knowledge

• Translation, missionary education, and the Roman alphabet

• Maya historical memory in The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel

• Healing and ritual knowledge in Ritual of the Bacabs

• The unequal archive and the question of why some voices survived

• Final reflection asking who has the power to decide what becomes history

X. Conclusion

• I would end by emphasizing that archives are not neutral collections of surviving facts.

• The Maya historical record reflects destruction, translation, colonial selection, and Indigenous adaptation.

• Reading Landa beside Maya language sources shows both the violence of colonial knowledge production and the continued work of Maya people to preserve their own perspectives.

• The final question for the audience would be who gets to decide what knowledge is preserved, translated, prohibited, or remembered.

XI. Working source list

• Diego de Landa, Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, Spanish language PDF, n.p., n.d.

• The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, translated and edited by Ralph L. Roys, University of Oklahoma Press, 1967.

• Ritual of the Bacabs, A Book of Maya Incantations, edited and translated by Ralph L. Roys, University of Oklahoma Press, 1965.

• William F. Hanks, Converting Words, Maya in the Age of the Cross, University of California Press, 2010.

• Julia A. Hendon, Status and Power in Classic Maya Society, American Anthropologist 93, no. 4, 1991.

• Takeshi Inomata, The Power and Ideology of Artistic Creation, Current Anthropology 42, no. 3, 2001.

• Sarah E. Jackson, Politics of the Maya Court, University of Oklahoma Press, 2013.

• Matthew Restall, The Maya World, Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550 to 1850, Stanford University Press, 1997.

An applied historical analysis connecting nineteenth-century privacy debates to modern genetic data ethics. (Also featured in Works I’m Proud Of.)

I conduct genealogical research for individuals seeking to trace their family history. Whether out of personal curiosity, to establish citizenship eligibility, to connect their lineage to specific places, or to uncover biological heritage after adoption.

My process combines digital research tools with cross-platform verification. I follow historical records, compare findings across multiple sources, and maintain full transparency about the certainty of each connection. When information is uncertain or unverified, I clearly note this to ensure accuracy and ethical integrity in my work.

Doing work like this has strengthened my skills in source evaluation, archival navigation, and historical documentation. This reflects in my broader commitment to making history personal. accessible. and accurate.

One client approached with the goal of tracing her mother's side of the family to its origins in Israel. Here, I cross-references multiple databases, immigration records, and archives. Using those, I was able to confirm a documented lineage on that side of her family to specific towns in Israel. The final report includes a generational chart so she can visually see how she directly goes back to that time, and it also included notes on the region's history. I always make sure to clearly mark when records are inconclusive, or if I myself am not confident in what I found.