Andrea Reed-Leal

My research engages subjects such as the history of the book and other textual technologies, women's intellectuality, circulation of ideas, and Indigenous epistemologies in the context of early colonial Latin America. My monograph in progress, tentatively titled Crafting the Sacred: Nahua Women and Indigenous Knowledge in Colonial Mexico, examines textual and pictorial representations of Nahua women’s artisanal expertise in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. I focus on women who wove textiles, prepared specialized beverages, practiced herbal medicine, and produced pigments, arguing that these activities were understood both as forms of artisanal labor and as embodied forms of knowledge. Representations of women’s abilities to craft reveal that Nahuas understood bodily energies to be transferred into materials and objects, making artisanal production a site of social, moral, and sacred authority. The book argues that Nahua representations of women’s craft preserved and negotiated Indigenous understandings of expertise and authority at a time when their social, political, and economic roles were significantly undermined by colonial institutions and demographic collapse.

My dissertation research has been supported by the Newberry Library, Princeton University Library, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Library of Congress, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago, and the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago. In 2024, I was awarded the Booth Graduate Student Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality Course Design Prize for “Indigenous Feminisms of Latin America.”

I am also an editor, translator, ceramicist, and writer. Other freelance projects include Enredos materiales (Pitzilein, 2025), Cerámica para el chocolate (2024), and the edited anthologies Desde el fin de un mundo (Contratiempo Revista, 2026), Habitar la biblioteca (Biblioteca Revelaciones, 2023) and El río que no vemos. Crónicas de Tizapán (ITAM, 2017). She is also the author of essays, short stories, and book reviews in literary magazines, such as Luvina, Letras Libres, and Revista de la Universidad de México.