Art Department Assistant Professor Receives Cambridge Fellowship

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Ana Pulido-Rull

Ana Pulido-Rull, an assistant professor in the Department of Art  in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, has been chosen to receive a Visiting Fellowship at Lucy Cavendish College/University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England, for the 2016-17 academic year. 

The visiting fellow program gives faculty the opportunity to join the vibrant academic community at the University of Cambridge, which is celebrating its 807th anniversary this year. Visiting scholars are typically engaged in teaching and/or research at the university or in a recognized research establishment while in Cambridge. Visiting fellowships are awarded on a competitive basis to scholars who are not normally residents in Cambridge. 

Pulido-Rull's research focuses on colonial Latin American art and examines how indigenous practices, particularly the use of paintings in legal, administrative and religious contexts, became a pivotal element of colonial society.

She will be working on her book manuscript, Land Grant Painted Maps: Native Artists, Defense of Territory, and the Power of Visual Persuasion in Colonial New Spain. This project analyzes a number of maps painted by native artists from Mexico in the sixteenth century for the legal proceedings known as "land grants," or mercedes de tierras.

These paintings were an essential component of the indigenous communities' response to Spanish land distribution and allowed them to defend their land and translate their own ideas about space into visual form. The libraries at the University of Cambridge hold valuable resources related to her research project, such as a collection of manuscripts known as the Conway Collection, or Transcripts from the National Library of Mexico, as well as a part of the original Alva Ixtlilxochitl manuscripts. 

Pulido-Rull received her doctorate in art history from Harvard University in 2012 and joined the Art Department of the University of Arkansas as assistant professor that same year. A native of Mexico City, she also holds a B.A. in history from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she began her research on indigenous painted maps and manuscripts.