Cristina Cruz Gonzalez, PhD
Associate Professor
Cristina Cruz González is a specialist in the visual culture of Spanish America. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Chicago and her M.Phil in Classics from Cambridge University. She holds an M.A. in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. in Anthropology from Yale University. She has worked for the Art Institute of Chicago and has been the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Museum Fellowship, a Getty Research Fellowship, a Newberry Consortium Faculty Fellowship, a Mendel Research Fellowship, and an Oklahoma Humanities Council Grant.
González is finishing her first monograph, "Landscapes of Conversion: Franciscan Politics and Sacred Objects in New Spain," which is focused on Franciscan image theory in colonial Mexico. The book considers the relationship between medieval piety and colonial devotions, the circulation and propagation of sacred objects in the Americas, and the effect of mendicant patronage on religious ritual. She has begun work on a second book project, "Women on the Cross: Imitatio Christi and Female Piety in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America."
She is a Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Aesthetics at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City during the fall semester 2014.
Selected Publications:
“Crucifixion Piety in New Mexico: On the Origins and Art of St Librada,” RES: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics (vol. 65/66 Spring/Autumn 2014).
“The Balvanera Escudo,” in Conversations: An Online Journal of the Initiative for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion (2014): http://mavcor.yale.edu/conversations/object-narratives/balvanera-escudo
“Mexican Instauration: Devotion, Renovation, and Transformation in New Spain,” Religion and the Arts, Vol. 18, 1-2 (January 2014): 87-113.
“From Conversion to Reconversion: Assessing Franciscan Missionary Practices and Visual Culture in Colonial Mexico,” Beyond the Text: Franciscan Art and the Construction of Religion, ed. Xavier Seubert and Oleg Bychkov (St. Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2013), 125-146.
"Our Lady of el Pueblito: A Marian Devotion on the Northern Frontier," in Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture, vol. 23 (2012): 3-21.
“The Circulation of Flemish Iconography in Mexican Missions and the Creation of a New Visual Narrative, 1630-1830” in California Mission Studies Association, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2008): 5-34.
“Seeing Double: Iterable Monuments and Imperial Power” in The Political Image/La Imagen Politica, ed. Cuauhtémoc Medina (Mexico: UNAM, 2006), 489-508.