A Vital Matters Voice: Helen Burgos-Ellis
Helen
Burgos-Ellis
Art Historian and Lecturer
César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
BIOGRAPHY
Helen Burgos-Ellis, a native of El Salvador, trained as an art historian. Her research interests include pre-Columbian and colonial art, Amerindians (pre-Columbian to modern), maize domestication, history of science, interaction between art and science, and early modern Europe.
Her upcoming book Aztec Science: Plant Sexuality, Pollination, and the Origin of Maize in the pre-Columbian Codex Borgia introduces a radical approach to the study of pre-Columbian art. Burgos-Ellis is currently collaborating with colleagues at Stanford University on the project Natural Things Ad Fontes Naturae. Her contributions include an article, “Pollen: The Sexual Lives of Plants in Mesoamerica,” for Natural Things: Ecologies of Knowledge in the Early Modern World, edited by McKenzie Cooley with foreword by Alan Mikhail and is now writing about the concept of biological reality. Other forthcoming publications include “Innocents Abroad? Representations of Aztecs Traveling in Europe in the Age of Exploration,” in Tornaviaje: España-Nueva España, as well as the article “Will the Real Coyolxauhqui Please Stand Up? Significance of Her Representations in Image and Text.” Burgos-Ellis is active in community service. Burgos-Ellis currently collaborates with the Social Justice and Community Partnerships at Marlborough School for Girls, and the Wayuu Taya Foundation, which helps to improve the lives of indigenous peoples in Latin America, http://www.wayuutaya.org.
