Writing and images

Today in class we talked about corn, history, writing, and work. I used a new tool in class for the first time: the Offline Image Viewer of the electronic database ArtSTOR. I'll write more about that tool another time, but what it allows me to do is have access to a fabulous database of images and use them for class without violating copyright laws. I used it to search for images tagged with corn or maiz, and turned up one famous image of a Maya scribe writing, who is depicted with an ear of corn in his headdress, probably associated with the Young Corn God.
The photo here in this post was taken by Ana and Jose on their travels in South America (gracias) and they lent it to me to use in class because we had been talking about the challenges we teachers will face as we try to take advantage of the latest groovy technologies for multimedia in the classroom, while trying to respect the rights of authors and artists to their work. It is a challenge for the blog as well. I am trying to only post images I shot myself, or links to images, but it's so easy to copy and image and post it--when do we cross the line?

The subject of writing in the Americas--writing systems that pre-date European arrival and the introduction of alphabetic literacy--is one that fascinates me, and on which I've done a lot of research, although I am not a specialist in that area. This explanation of how Maya heiroglyphic writing works, and how that compares to the alphabet we use, is a good explanation to start with. The links on the page are excellent. It is part of the very cool FAMSI site (Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc).

There has been much written on the Popol Vuh. I recommend this post on the blog Posthegemony, not as a "starter" post, but as an excellent sythesis of the scholarship and thinking on the topic.