Christopher Valesey

I graduated from Penn State in summer 2019, and I am now an Assistant Teaching Professor at Ball State University. My dissertation, titled “Managing the Herd: Nahuas and Livestock in Sixteenth-Century New Spain”, treated Nahuas’ relations with European livestock as one of the most important aspects of their connection to the early Spanish colonial state and a primary channel of socio-cultural exchange. My work demonstrates that in the case of colonial Mexico, changes to human interactions with European animals like cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, chickens, dogs, and even silk worms allowed Nahuas to participate in colonialism in ways that would not have been possible without their presence. I have served as a research assistant, a teaching assistant in introductory US and Global courses, and an editorial assistant for the Hispanic American Historical Review. I have a forthcoming article in the Sixteenth Century Journal titled “Perseverance of the Eagle-Jaguar Military Ethos in Sixteenth-Century New Spain.”

Specialty Interests:

Sixteenth-century Mexico

Nahuatl

Human-animal relatiionships