Profile

Nadia Cervantes Pérez (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison; B.A., Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico) joined Princeton University in 2014. Her teaching experience includes a variety of literature, culture, language and methodology classes. At Princeton, she created an Intermediate Spanish course which exposes students to the concept of neocolonialism through texts and audiovisual materials that deal with issues of race, ethnicity and cross-cultural encounters. In addition, she teaches other Intermediate and Advanced Spanish Language courses that spans a variety of disciplines (Literature, Film, Chicano, and Cultural Studies) and topics such as Latinos in the US, Spanish-speaking urban communities, and Latin American History. Among her teaching interests are: community and service, Indigenous languages, global citizenship, and the role of culture in the language classroom.

Her research focuses on the intersection of violence and performance in Colonial Mexico, postcolonial representations of the Indigenous, borderlands, Nahua histories, and devotional expressions in the Spanish Empire. Her publications include articles in Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Transmodernity and REVISTARQUIS. Currently, she is working on a book-length project entitled: El archivo expiatorio: El sacrificio azteca en la historiografía del siglo XVI. This book examines the centrality of Indigenous and Christian ritual performances in early colonial discourse. Based on the examination of historical narratives, códices, illustrations, church documents, and religious plays she sheds light on the rhetorical and ideological uses of nahua ritual performances in the context of the Spanish transatlantic expansion.