Headshot of Alanna Simone Radlo-Dzur.

Alanna Simone Radlo-Dzur

she/ella/they/elle

Assistant Professor of Art History

PhD, Ohio State University, 2023

Office Location
518 Morey Hall

Office Hours: by appointment (https://calendly.com/aradlodz-ur)

Biography

Alanna S. Radlo-Dzur is an art historian of cultures native to the American continent with a primary focus on Mesoamerica. With a background as a filmmaker and lens-based artist, she comes to Rochester from the department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University where she was Postdoctoral Research Associate in Indigenous and Native North American Studies (2023-2024). Apprenticed to Byron Ellsworth Hamann and Claudia L. Brittenham for her academic training, her education is rooted in the intensive study of Nahuatl language and culture in Mexico and the United States taught by native-speakers from the Chicontepec region of Veracruz. Her contributions to the K’acha Willaykuna Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art and Humanities projects at Ohio State University, the Florentine Codex Initiative at the Getty Research Institute, the Translating Mesoamerica project at Princeton University, and the Curso náhuatl-inglés of the Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ) demonstrate her commitment to projects centered on language revitalization and archival accessibility to empower Indigenous communities.

Research Overview

A circuitous path from music and theater through filmmaking via video art eventually landed Dr. Radlo-Dzur in the academic field of art history. Those somewhat unusual early experiences taught her valuable lessons about communicating ideas in interesting and engaging ways. Each provided distinct methods for conducting research and working collaboratively. As an art historian, her work centers the peoples and cultures native to the American continent– past, present, and future. Her primary focus is Mesoamerica, specifically Nahuatl-speaking communities of central Mexico in the postclassic and early colonial periods (that’s about 1350s to 1650s CE, including but not limited to the Aztecs). Inherently interdisciplinary, she writes at the intersection of archaeology, gender, religion, and linguistic disciplines with an ethno-historical approach to Indigenous epistemologies.

Dr. Radlo-Dzur is currently revising her first book project entitled Mixtitlan Ayauhtitlan (in the Clouds, in the Mist): The Invisible in Early Modern Nahua Art, on the graphic depiction of invisible concepts – from the sensorium to the divine – in postclassic and early colonial Nahua artistic traditions of central Mexico. A second book project, also in development, explores the fluid roles of diplomats, huaqueros, museum staff, and art dealers in the history of collecting Precolumbian objects centered on a case study elaborately carved metates (grinding stones) of Gran Nicoya on the Pacific coast of Central America.

Dr. Radlo-Dzur contributes to a variety of projects supporting language revitalization and archival accessibility for Native communities. As the descendant of immigrants to the American continent (predominantly arriving from Poland in the 1880s and 1940s), she considers it an ethical necessity to work alongside and in support of Native people on projects initiated, approved, directed, and guided by Native leaders and scholars. Ultimately, her academic practice is grounded in service to the agency and autonomy of Indigenous communities in recognition of the fact that so many privileges she enjoys as an American citizen come at enormous cost to the First Peoples of this land.

Research Interests

  • Native American and Indigenous studies
  • Histories and materialities of the book, printing, writing, and mark-making
  • Storytelling, performance, and ethnohistory
  • Mesoamerican art and cultural studies
  • The sensorium and phenomenology
  • Museum studies and critique

Courses Offered (subject to change)

  • AHST 125:  Mesoamerican Art History
  • AHST 247/447:  Indigenous Women: Aztlan to Oaxacalifornia
  • AHST 398/598:  Collecting Ancient Americas

Selected Publications

  • 2025 co-author with Kim N. Richter, Bérenice Gaillemin, and Alicia María Houtrouw, “El Códice Florentino Digital: resignificación y reproducción en la era digital,” en Mundos en movimiento, historias entrelazadas, Perspectivas actuales sobre el encuentro de los mundos mexicano y europeo, Anne Kraume y Kirsten Mahlke (eds.), Bibliotheca Ibero-Americana, vol 199, Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut Preußischer Kulturbesitz y Vervuert
  • 2024 “Scrolls of smoke and sky: an analysis of scent and sound in the Borgia group manuscripts,” In Art and the Senses in Ancient America, Materiality & Meanings, edited by Ma. Luisa Vázquez de Ágredos Pascual, Ana García Barrios, and Megan O’Neil, 213-229. Archaeopress, Oxford, doi.org/10.2307/jj.23338165.19
  • 2023 co-author with Richter, et al, “Creating the Digital Florentine Codex: Collaboration and Reproduction in the Digital Age,” Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, 5.4 (2023):102-114, doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2023.5.4.102
  • 2021 1st author with Mackenzie Cooley, Leah Bright, Emily Kaplan, and Elizabeth Haude, “Tira of don Martin: A Living Nahua Chronicle,” Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, 3.3 (2021): 7-37, doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2021.3.3.7
  • 2018 “Juan Araujo,” “Juan Capistran,” “Laura Huertas Millán,” “Jessica Vaughn,” “Visible Collective,” “Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Búrca,” in FRONT international: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art: An American City, 30-31, 58-59, 112-113, 222-223, 226-227, 230-231, Cleveland Museum of Art
  • 2016 MIA [Moving Image Art] Catalogue 2012-2014, Armory Press