Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Grant
Deadline February 10th
Faculty Information______
Name: Linnea Wren
Dept:_Art and Art History
Email:
Rank:Professor
Checklist______
X Description of previous projects (and outcomes) funded by RSC grants
X Complete project description, including separate statements of:
- Purpose. What are the intellectual, conceptual, or artistic issues? How does your work fit into other endeavors being done in this field?
- Feasibility. What qualifications do you bring to this project? What have you done/will you do to prepare for this project? What is the time period, i.e. summer, summer and academic year, academic year only? Is the work’s scope commensurate with the time period of the project?
- Project Design. This should include a specific description of the project design and activities, including location, staff, schedules or itineraries, and desired outcomes.
X RSC Budget Proposal Form
X If successful, my proposal can be used as an example to assist future faculty applications. This decision will not in any way influence the evaluation of my application. Check box to give permission.
Submission instructions______
Electronic — Submit a single document containing the entire application to .
Paper — Submit one (1) copyof completed application to the John S. Kendall Center for Engaged Learning (SSC 119).
Directions: 1. Enter your Name
2. Enter the Stipend Costs
3. Enter the Project Costs (both individual costs and Total Project Cost)
4. Enter Total Amount Requested (Total Project Cost + Stipend)
NAME __Linnea Wren______
Application for a Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Grant
February 2012
Submitted by Linnea Wren
Department of Art and Art History
Description of previous projects (and outcomes) funded by RSC grants
1983 RSC Summer Grant
Research on Primary Documents related to Ancient Art
The grant allowed me to hire a student research assistant to locate primary documents related to Egyptian, Greek and Roman art. The outcome was the publication of a textbook, Perspectives on Western Art, vol 1, (New York: Harper and Row)
1990 RSC Summer Grant
Research on Primary Documents related to Modern Art
The grant allowed me to hire a student research assistant to locate primary documents related to Renaissance, Baroque and nineteenth century art. The outcome was the publication of a textbook, Perspectives on Western Art, vol 2, (New York: Harper and Row)
1995 RSC Summer Grant
Research on Primary Documents related to Contemporary Art
The grant allowed me to hire a student research assistant to locate primary documents related to contemporary art. Unfortunately, the publication of the resultant volume has been postponed. However, the research made me far more familiar with contemporary art. I have become active in presenting and publishing papers that involve contemporary imagery.
1996 RSC Summer Grant
Field Work in Ancient Maya Sites in Yucatan, Mexico
The grant allowed me to visit current archeological field projects and to consult with my colleagues about their excavation strategies. I also participated in a documentation project at one site. The outcomes of this research include five papers presented at professional conferences:
2000 Commemoration, Celebration and Replication: Function and Persuasion in the Art of Chichén Itzá, Second Maler Symposium, Bonn University, Germany.
1998“New Approaches to Iconography at Chichen Itza,” Society for American Archaeology, in Chicago, IL
1998“Military Structures and Strictures in the Terminal Classic Period: Chichen Itza and the Northern Maya Lowlands,” Society for American Archaeology, in Seattle, WA
1997“Ritual Dance: Spirituality in Ancient and Modern Maya Culture,” 4th Annual Conference of Art and Christian Enquiry, in Amsterdam, Holland
1997“Patterns of Names and the Identities of the Maya,” Science Museum of Minnesota
The outcomes of this research also include three papers published in professional journals and volumes. Each is co-authored with one or more students who assisted me in research.
2001"Political Rhetoric and Gender Spheres" (with Krysta Hochstetler and Kaylee Spencer) in Landscape and Power of the Ancient Maya, ed. Rex Koontz and Kathryn Reese-Taylor. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press)
2001"Maya Calendrics" (with Kaylee Spencer) and "Maya Religion and Cosmology" (with Kaylee Spencer), in The Ancient Maya (ed. Lynn Foster). Facts on File, New York
1998“Ritual Dance: Spirituality in Ancient Maya Culture,” (with Kaylee Spencer and Krysta Hochstetler) in Arts.
1998 RSC Summer Grant
Issues of Ethics, Religion and Spirituality in Contemporary Art
The grant allowed me to hire a student research assistant to locate interviews, critical reviews and documents related to artists of the 1990’s whose work dealt significantly with religious symbols, subjects and themes.
The outcomes include two papers presented at professional conferences:
2001Cultural Divides and Religious Dialogues: Contemporary Religious Art Keynote Address.International conference of Art and Christian Enquiry, Minneapolis, July 25-29
1999“Visualizing Theology: Diverse Approaches to Spirituality,”
Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. Keynote address for the Arts and Theology Conference of United Theological Seminary
The outcomes also include two papers published in professional journals and one entry published in a museum catalog. The catalogue entry was co-authored by two students.
2001“Day of the Dead Installations in Minnesota: Traditions Celebrated in Art” in Art and Christianity Enquiry Bulletin, no.28, Oct. 2001, pp.6-7.
2002“Cultural Celebrations and Cultural divides in Religion and the Visual Arts,” in ARTS: The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies, vol.13, no.2: 20-25.
1998“Maria Izquierdo,” catalog entry (with Krysta Hochstetler and Kaylee Spencer) in Modern Art and The Religious Imagination, ed. by Rosemary Crumlin. Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
2003RSC Summer Grant
Icons and Iconoclasm among Contemporary Latina American Women Artists.
The grant allowed me to hire a student research assistant to locate interviews, critical reviews and documents related to contemporary Latin American women artists using themes of iconoclasm.
The outcomes include two papers presented at two professional conferences:
2003“Contemporary Icons in the Iconoclastic Age of AIDS,” International Conference of Art and Christian Enquiry, St Petersburg, July 8-14
2007“Contemplative Practices in Seeing and Believing,” Wabash Symposium on Theology and the Arts, St. Paul, MN, July 25-30, 2007
Complete project description, including separate statements of:
- Purpose. What are the intellectual, conceptual, or artistic issues? How does your work fit into other endeavors being done in this field?
Intellectual and Conceptual Issues
I am requesting a Research, Scholarship and Creativity Grant to pursue advanced scholarship in the field of Maya art and archaeology. I will be on sabbatical in fall semester 2012 and January 2013 during which time I will be researching the violence inflicted upon and the subsequent subjugation of women and children in Maya warfare.
Maya scholarship has traditionally focused on the monumental sculpted images and their related inscriptions created in Mexico and Guatemala during the Classic and Terminal Classic periods (CE 250-1000) and prominently displayed in public plazas of Maya cities. These sculptures typically celebrate masculine rulers, including their prominent roles as military victors. Their inscriptions recount the rulers’ lives in mythico-historical terms that emphasize their physical prowess and their militaristic deeds. In some cases, the images of women as parts of victorious elite households are present. These, like the images of successful elite rulers and warriors, have been studied extensively.
In contrast, almost no scholarly work has been done the actions and impact of warfare on women and children in vanquished populations. The narratives of this populationgroup are not recorded in the inscriptional record nor are their images depicted in monumental imagery. To study this group, I will examine the visual record of Maya conflictand the archaeological context of Maya sites in war zones.
Scenes of warfare involving elite males and women as their elegant palace companions are frequent. These scenes involve extensive ceremonial preparations before conflict and public celebrations after victory. These scenes further emphasize combat as symmetrical contests between individual male combatants that elevate the status of the victor while confirming the valor of the defeated. Focus on such imagery has led to the interpretation of Maya wars as culturally choreographed exercises in rulership, which were limited in scope and primarily ritual in nature.
However, depictions of subjugated women and children, although rare, reveal other, address an overlooked dimension of Maya warfare that was far more invasive and destructive. One such depiction consists of a multi-figure scene on a Late Classic ceramic vessel, dated approximately 750 CE. This ceramic vessel, represents six women in postures of submission to male warriors. These women are shown in differing postures of subjugation and humiliation. Some protect children; some are stripped and displayed for the inspection of their captors. One such woman struggles to protect her infant and small child from the upraised spear of her male captor. A subjugated male, also stripped nude, is restrained, evidently as he attempts to aid the woman. The vessel itself was used in elite male feasting contexts where its imagery would have reflected cultural norms regarding what was and was not acceptable.
A second media that records subjugated women and children consists of wall murals in the northern Yucatan peninsula dating between 700-1050 CE. The Yucatan peninsula was a region of endemic warfare, as evidenced archaeologically by the fortification of sites and by signs of their violent destruction.At the sites of Mul Chic, Dzula, Ichmac and Chacmultun, murals, now in fragmentary condition, depict violence in war and deaths inflicted upon conquered populations.
The most extensive set of images depicting subjugated women and children consists of battle murals, however, is found at the site of Chichen Itza in north-central Yucatan, Mexico. As the dominantregional polity between 700-1050 CE, Chichen Itza celebrated the military prowess of its warriors in sculptural displays across virtually every surface of every monumental structure. Idealized portrayals of male soldiers cover the monumental surfaces of the almost all public buildings, both inside and outside. But in one temple, the Upper Temple of the Jaguars, narrative depictions of war were also recorded in mural format. These war murals overtly continue the celebration of male warriors seen elsewhere in sculpture, but interestingly, also include extensive vignettes depicting noncombatant women and children. These scenes depict village life as it was before, during and after attack. In these scenes, invading forces are shown overwhelming the village defenders; fortifications are breached; houses are torched; and women can be seen attempting to flee from advancing soldiers. The women are weighted down, in some instances, by the bundled possessions they attempt to carry, and, in other instances, possibly by the children they appear to bear on their backs. Only two studies of these murals have been published. While each study comments extensively about the male combatants and their war strategies, neither study has even remarked upon the village scenes (Coggins 1984; Ringle 2009)
These war scenes are a stark departure from the numerous elite ceramic vessels that emphasize women as elegant palace companions to elite male rulers and warriors. They suggest that women, though not celebrated as combatants, were deliberate targets of warfare. Slowed in flight by their roles as mothers, captured women apparently were sexually targeted as a means to subjugate the defeated population. Their subsequent captivity almost certainly yielded economic advantage to victors of war since they could have provided skilled labor that created the textiles and other gendered goods prized by the Maya as wealth and tribute. Maya warfare, therefore, emerges as violence that encompassed non-combatant populations for the economic, as well as political, advantage of powerful polities.
Relationship to other endeavors in the field
My research will focus on the images of subjugated women and children in Maya imagery and will place them in the context of recent art historical scholarship and archaeological fieldwork. It will draw upon recent studies related to gender and warfare. Important studies of women in Maya household societies and palace politics have been made by Rosemary Joyce and Susan Gillespie (2000) and Traci Ardren (2004). The exercise of political power by women has been investigated by Cecila Klein (2000) and Rosemary Joyce (2000); while women’s resistance to dominant state ideology has been studied by Elizabeth Brumfiel (1993, 1997). Sharisse and Geoffrey McCafferty (1991), Barbara Stark et al (1997) and Traci Ardren et al (2010) have documented the economic value of women’s labor in creating and sustaining tribute states. Important research on warfare has been published by David Webster (1999), Karl Taube (2000), James Ambrosino (2003) and David Freidel (2007). My research, therefore, will add to this scholarship by its focus on subjugated women and children and what their treatment, roles and resistance reveal about Maya warfare.
- Feasibility. What qualifications do you bring to this project? What have you done/will you do to prepare for this project? What is the time period, i.e. summer, summer and academic year, academic year only? Is the work’s scope commensurate with the time period of the project?
Qualifications
I am qualified to undertake this project as an art historian who has specialized in Maya art and archaeology. I have spent considerable time in Yucatan, Mexico and have been involved extensively in research projects there. I maintain professional contacts with colleagues both in the US and in Mexico. I have access to unpublished archaeological materials and to museum collections necessary to this project.
Time period
I am already doing preliminary research for this project and will be pursuing this project during the summer, fall of 2012, as well as January 2013.
Commensurability
The project is commensurate with the time period.
- Project Design. This should include a specific description of the project design and activities, including location, staff, schedules or itineraries, and desired outcomes.
Design and Activities
In order to pursue this research, I will focus on two sets of imagery: the imagery related to women and warfare on ceramic vessels, and the murals of northern Yucatan. The scenes represented on ceramic vessels images are well documented and publicly accessible both through a series of publications by Michael Coe (1973, 1978, 1982) and Justin and Barbara Kerr (1989, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1997, 2000) and through the on-line Kerr database (
In contrast, the murals are inadequately documented. Murals are fragile and suffer from environmental damage and the consequences of tourism. The murals at the sites of Mul Chic, Dzula, Ichmac and Chacmultun have been documented recently by my colleague, Victoria Lyall. Lyall documented the murals in detailed digital photographs, taken in situ, and she is sharing that documentation with me. The murals from Chichen Itza, however, lack photographic documentation. Access to their study is much more limited, since adequate documentation is available only through a set of unique watercolor reproductions in the collection of Bristol Museum, England.
The Chichen Itza murals were first discovered in the 1880’s and have steadily deteriorated since then. I have seen the murals themselves in situ many times and have photographed them. When I first saw them in the 1970’s, they were badly damaged, although areas were still faintly legible. Since then, extensive further deterioraton has occurred.
The most complete documentation of murals of Chichen Itza was the work of Adela Breton, a Victorian woman from Bristol, who spent her adulthood as an independent scholar in Mexico. There, in the 1890’s, she saw the murals of Chichen Itza while large sections of them were still extant and vibrant. She was foresighted enough to recognize their fragility and therefore spent two months making over 150 full-scale watercolor sketches of mural details and two ¼ scale copies. She deposited one ¼ scale copy at the Peabody Museum at Harvard and the second ¼ scale copy plus her full-scale copies at the Bristol Museum. The only publication of any of the Adela Breton’s documentation was the reproduction in the 1980’s of the Peabody Museum watercolor reproductions. The color plates that the Peabody Museum published are reduced to a size of 3 inches in height. The extreme reduction in size severely reduces legibility of complex, multifigural compositions that are 10 feet in height in their original format.
I am seeking support in order to visit Bristol Museum and to study the full-scale documentation of the murals. I have had access to the ¼ scale watercolors deposited at the Peabody Museum. But my current sabbatical project requires access to the Bristol full-scale sketches that include a level of detail that is not present in the smaller renditions. Since Bristol Museum has not had resources to have these sketches photographed by their professional staff, there is no option except to visit Bristol to see them. Bristol Museum has given me permission to view and photograph this collection. I am therefore applying for RSC funds that will permit me to travel to Bristol and to study and photograph the watercolor reproductions of the murals.
Schedule and Itinerary
Outcome
I will be both presenting my research at scholarly conferences and publishing my research. As an indication of the interest in this topic, I have already been invited to present my preliminary research in April 2012 at the annual conference of the Society of American Archaeology. I intend to present my research at professional conferences and to publish my results in professional journals.
Budget-See also RSC Budget Proposal Form
Airfare $1250 (in November to avoid peak tourist season
Hotel $900 (7 nights at approximately $130 per night)
Food $280 (7 days at $40 per day)
Land transport $125