IIIF for Educators

Codex Chapman Final Project

💡 Concept

The overall course objective for AH 323 is to acquire a visual literacy in the artistic cultures of Tenochtitlán-Mexico City during the early modern period and understand the processes of cultural exchange and colonialism. One of the primary tools of colonialism in the Americas was the systematic evangelization of the Indigenous populations through missionary programs and institutions. The Florentine Codex is certainly one such missionary project.

At the same time, the Florentine Codex records a complex and multi-directional flow of information, encoding tension and resistance as much as transmission of Indigenous knowledge. It was a team project, produced by Nahua authors in an educational institution at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco outside of Mexico City. As readers, viewers, and interpreters of this monumental artifact half a millennium later, we too are interlocutors with its messages. How does our own situated historical and cultural knowledge at a 21st Century educational institution in Los Angeles receive and resonate with the Florentine Codex?

🖥️ Activity

Our task is to compile and author a team-based collaborative response artifact to the Florentine Codex in Scalar, using the multimodal literacies of our own time: linked digital imagery, annotation, metadata, and text. Working in small, thematically focused groups, you will each compose and illustrate your own scrolling page (approx. 5-7 pages equivalent), and also co-author an illustrated group page that introduces your thematic as a collective "Book" in the Codex Chapman. Your respective entries will analyze and share your observations about how knowledge was constructed (perhaps obfuscated), and communicated in the bilingual text and "third narrative" about your topic. 

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Topics

I want all of you to work in small group contexts of 3. You can sign up for one of the broad topics listed below, but I expect that you will refine this topic down to something of particular interest to your group. The search aids that are available let you explore topics across the volumes, even if the majority of your thematic topic may be situated in just one of the volumes. 

• • Book 1: foodways, food and ritual
  • Book 2: plants, animals, and the natural world
  • Book 3: herbal medicine and healing
  • Book 4: merchants and traders
  • Book 5: astrology and divination
  • Book 6: role of women; gender and identity
  • Book 7: education of children

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Groups

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KzXJNnew9VUbiqawqB83HivjVr-nBO7T8Lh76bD35sM/edit

🧱 Materials

We have discussed the creation of the Florentine Codex extensively in class, but please read the article below for a deeper consideration of the context of its creation, especially the virulent epidemic of 1576 that formed the background noise of the project.

• • *Kevin Terraciano (2019). “Introduction: An Encyclopedia of Nahua Culture: Context and Content.” The Florentine Codex: An Encyclopedia of the Nahua World in Sixteenth-Century Mexico. Eds. Jeannette Peterson and Kevin Terraciano. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019), 1-12.

Make sure also to avail yourselves of any/all of the readings on the syllabus to help build your projects, and make explicit reference by means of quotation, paraphrase, and a Works Cited list.

• • See especially the readings by Elizabeth Boone, Diana Magaloni-Kerpel, Kim Richter & Alicia Houtrow, and Jeanette Favrot Peterson.

🪛 Guidance

Questions to consider

• What is the relationship between the Spanish and Nahuatl texts and the images for your topic? Are there discrepancies, or untranslatable concepts, when moving between text(s) and image? Are there key Nahuatl terms that are important to discuss?
• Consider what we have learned about Mexica writing with images. What can the images reveal about your topic that is left out of the textual narrative?
• Using the high resolution IIIF images, each student should discuss the formal qualities of the primary images that they have chosen. Remember that this manuscript is a transcultural product produced by Nahua artists trained in Nahua and European Renaissance forms of picture making. When looking at your chosen images, consider such issues as the choice of color (or monochrome), line, illusionism, or any other aspects of the images that can be understood with a close examination of the page.

🛠️ Tools

Scalar

Scalar is a digital publishing and exhibition platform that enable authors (all of you!) to create projects that emphasize and make use of different media resources. Our class goal is to use the new digital resource of the DFC to build a Scalar “exhibit” (like a magazine spread or digital exhibition) that combines high resolution images with scholarly annotations. Given that this is an Art History class, and that the images of the Florentine Codex have not been examined with the serious attention they deserve as a rich “text” in their own right, I would like your small group projects to center around the images, and explore how a triangulated analysis of the images, Spanish text, and Nahuatl text, can reveal complex ideas about your particular topics.

Sample Individual Page

Here is a page in the Scalar "Chapbook" project that shows approximate size and elements of your individual pages (scroll to see in full).

"Book" group page

And here is a demo page of what a group project page might look like, with links to individual pages and thumbnails at the bottom

🪛 Requirements

Individual Pages

• Title: a concise encyclopedic or scholarly title reflective of your page content, argument, and/or perspective
• Approximately 1500 words of text (5-7 pages equivalent)
• Media import:
  • at least 3 linked images + minimum 1 image detail
  • sourced from Digital Florentine Codex and/or other IIIF-compatible source
  • complete and accurate metadata: description, source, link
• Average 2 annotations per image (don't have to be evenly distributed)
• At least 1 image detail 

Group "Book" pages

Your group should choose one or two images from your respective individual pages for the group page, as well as an image detail or two. You should work together to figure out how to arrange your theme so that you have an Introduction to your topic, and that each of you analyze a particular concept within that topic. Remember, think about how this will make sense presenting this to the class.

• Book title
• Introductory text (approx 250 words, or one page in a doc)
• Linked Scalar "path" in "structured media gallery" format with thumbnails and links to individual pages.

📩 Submission

Each student submits a link to their individual page, and a link to their team book page. 

Click on Submit Assignment button above to share links to your work.  

On mobile devices, navigate to the Submissions tab.