I am David Horacio Colmenares, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and History (by courtesy) at the University of California, Irvine. My research focuses on the intersections of early modern European antiquarianism, Spanish humanism and native traditions in colonial Mexico. More broadly, I am interested in the circulation of knowledge, visual culture, and hermeneutical practices between New Spain and other Iberian territories, and the role of Mexican indigenous elites in the interpretation of the pre-Columbian past. Recently, I have also turned my attention to the survival and adaptations of viceregal scribal traditions and knowledge practices in nineteenth-century Mexico.

I hold a PhD in Latin American and Iberian Cultures from Columbia University in the City of New York and a MA in Philosophy from KU Leuven, Belgium. During 2015-2016, I was a fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max Planck Institute. My research has also been supported by the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, RI, and Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard) in Washington DC.

I am currently a member of the international research project "Itineraries Around an Artifact: the Vatican Codex 3738 and the Intellectual Spheres of the Sixteenth Century" (UNAM/La Sapienza). My publications have appeared in the Colonial Latin American Review and the Hispanic American Historical Review.