Panelists:
Peter Hunt, Professor of Classics, University of Colorado-Boulder
Gabriel Kruell, Research Associate, Institute of Historical Research at National Autonomous University of Mexico
Paloma Martinez-Cruz, Professor of Latino/a Cultural and Literary Studies, The Ohio State University
Moderator: Bert Harrill, Professor of History, The Ohio State University
Panel Abstract: This panel will contextualize slavery and unfreedom before the age of explorations highlighting various early geographies and communities from the classical world to the Americas. It will cover key aspects that shaped servitude and link to how these materialized through class, gender, culture and law lenses.
Presenter: Peter Hunt
Presentation Title: “How is the water for running away? The gender of fugitive slaves in the classical world.”
Presentation Abstract: Modern studies suggest that enslaved men were more likely to try to escape slavery than women. Evidence from papyri and “slave collars” confirms that this was also the case in the classical world. This talk will examine the reasons for this disparity in the ancient world and will focus on the gendering of space and work.
About Peter Hunt:
Peter Hunt (M.A. CU Boulder 1988, Ph.D. Stanford 1994), a classical Greek historian, studies warfare and society, slavery, historiography and oratory. His first book, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology in the Greek Historians (Cambridge 1998), discerns a conflict between the extent of slave and Helot participation in Greek warfare and the representation of their role in contemporary historians. His second book War, Peace, and Alliance in Demosthenes' Athens (Cambridge 2010), uses the evidence of deliberative oratory as evidence for Athenian thinking and feelings about foreign relations. His third book, a survey on Ancient Greek and Roman Slavery, came out from Wiley Blackwell in 2018. In addition to various articles and reviews, he has contributed chapters to The Oxford Handbook of Demosthenes, The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides, The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare, The Cambridge World History of Slavery, and The Cambridge History of the World. Among other current projects, he is beginning work on a commentary on Plutarch’s Phocion.
Presenter: Gabriel Kruell
Presentation Title: "Tlacoyotl: Pre-hispanic slavery among the Mexica."
Presentation Abstract: This presentation explores the institution of tlacoyotl, a form of slavery practiced among the Mexica (Aztecs) and other Nahua-speaking peoples prior to the Spanish conquest. Far from resembling the racialized and hereditary slavery systems imposed during the colonial period, tlacoyotl was a socially and legally regulated status that could result from debt, punishment, warfare, or poverty-induced voluntary servitude. Drawing on primary sources such as the colonial codices and Indigenous annals, the work examines the multiple pathways into and out of slavery, the various forms of tlacoyotl practiced by the Mexica, the rights and obligations of enslaved individuals and theirs owners, and the broader sociopolitical functions of the tlacotin (slaves) within Mexica society. The analysis further highlights the nuanced role of slavery in daily life, ritual practice, tribute systems, and economic exchange. By situating tlacoyotl within its cultural and legal context, the presentation aims to challenge modern assumptions about slavery and to contribute to a more complex understanding of pre-Hispanic history and Mesoamerican social structures.
About Gabriel Kruell: Gabriel Kenrick Kruell is a full-time Associate Researcher (Investigador Asociado C) at the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). In 2015 he earned his Ph.D. in Mesoamerican Studies from the same Mexican university. His research focuses on the historiography and philology of Nahua texts, particularly the Crónica Mexicayotl and the elusive Crónica X. Dr. Kruell has contributed to the understanding of colonial-era Indigenous narratives. Notably, his co-authored article with Sylvie Peperstraete, "Determining the Authorship of the Crónica Mexicayotl: Two Hypotheses," published in The Americas (2014), offers critical insights into the authorship debates surrounding this pivotal text. In Mexico his scholarly excellence has been recognized with several honors, including the Alfonso Caso Medal from UNAM (2011), an honorable mention for the Francisco Javier Clavijero Prize for best doctoral thesis (2016), and the Best Review in Cultural History Award from the Comité Mexicano de Ciencias Históricas (2020).
Presenter: Paloma Martinez-Cruz
Presentation Title: "Women Healers of Tenochtitlan: Mexica Rites and Female Warriors"
Presentation Abstract: Medicine women among the Mexica publicly pursued medical knowledge, held offices of liturgical and spiritual authority, and championed women’s ways of knowing in the arena of civic ritual. However, their prospects as women thinkers were obstructed by the paradigm of masculine warriorhood that dominated the Mexica culture during its Postclassic period. Women healers were not only physicians, but also the national defenders of a feminine knowledge base that warriors attempted to appropriate and manipulate toward their own ends. This presentation explores how women articulated their own ways of knowing through a repertoire of state and household-level rituals that transmitted gender-specific knowledge systems and protected feminine medical specialization from encroachment by the warrior paradigm.
About Paloma Martinez-Cruz: Paloma Martinez-Cruz is an interdisciplinary scholar in the field of Latinx cultural studies. Her work interrogates the consequences of colonization and patriarchal orderings across diverse expressive cultures of the Americas. A professor of Latinx Cultural Studies in the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese and English at The Ohio State University, she is the author of Trust the Circle: The Resistance and Resilience of Rubén Castilla Herrera (2023), Food Fight! Millennial Mestizaje Meets the Culinary Marketplace (2019), Women and Knowledge in Mesoamerica: From East L.A. to Anahuac (2011) and the editor of A Handbook for the Rebel Artist in a Post-Democratic Society by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Saúl García-López (2021).
An interdisciplinary scholar-artist, Martinez-Cruz publishes poetry and fiction, and directs and performs with the Taco Reparations Brigade performance project that has recently been featured at the Columbus Museum of Art, Thompson Library Gallery, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Latinx Dance Educator’s Alliance Convivencia and elsewhere. She coordinates Onda Latinx Ohio, a BIPOC arts initiative showcasing Latinx community arts practices that prioritize radical inclusion through primera voz opportunities for artists and performers at all levels and ages.
