Carrasco, David 1944-

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CARRASCO, David 1944-

PERSONAL: Given name is accented on second syllable; born November 23, 1944, in Bainbridge, MD; son of David L. (a coach) and Marjorie (a painter; maiden name, Partin) Carrasco; divorced; children: La Anna Ruth, Octavio Pascal. Education: Western Maryland College, B.A., 1967; University of Chicago, M.A., 1972, Ph.D., 1977.

ADDRESSES: Office—Mesoamerican Archive, Princeton University, 1879 Hall, Princeton, NJ 08540.

CAREER: University of Colorado, Boulder, assistant professor, 1976-82, associate professor of religious studies, beginning 1982; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, visiting professor, 1991-92, professor of history of religions, 1993—, director of the Mesoamerican Archive.

AWARDS, HONORS: Ford Foundation Fellowship for Mexican Americans, 1975-76; Chancellor's Essay Prize from University of Colorado, 1982, for article "Aztec Vision of Place: The Templo Mayor," and Chancellor's Book Prize, 1983, for Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire; National Research Council fellow; West Maryland College, honorary doctorate, 1984; University of Colorado, Teaching Excellence Award, 1988; University of Colorado, Faculty Fellowship, 1989.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Jane Marie Swanburg) Waiting for the Dawn: Mircea Eliade in Perspective, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1985.

(With Johanna Broda and Eduardo Matos Moctezuma) The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan: Center and Periphery in the Aztec World, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1987.

(Editor) The Imagination of Matter: Religion and Ecology in Mesoamerican Traditions, B.A.R. (Oxford, England), 1989.

Religions of Mesoamerica: Cosmovision and Ceremonial Centers, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1990.

To Change Place: Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes, University Press of Colorado (Niwot, CO), 1991.

(Editor, with Jane Marie Law) Waiting for the Dawn: Mircea Eliade in Perspective, foreword by Joseph Mitsuo Kitagawa, photographs by Lawrence G. Desmond, University Press of Colorado (Niwot, CO), 1991.

(With Eduardo Matos Moctezuma) Moctezuma's Mexico: Visions of the Aztec World, University Press of Colorado (Niwot, CO), 1992.

(With Scott Sessions) Daily Life of the Aztecs: People of the Sun and Earth, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1998.

City of Sacrifice: The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilization, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1999.

(Editor) Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes, University Press of Colorado (Niwot, CO), 1999.

(Editor, with Lindsay Jones and Scott Sessions) Mesoamerica's Classic Heritage: From Teotihuacan to the Aztecs, University Press of Colorado (Boulder, CO), 2000.

Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1982, revised edition, University Press of Colorado (Boulder, CO), 2000.

(Editor) The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures: The Civilizations of Mexico and Central America, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Contributor to journals.

SIDELIGHTS: David Carrasco is a professor of historic religions and also director of the Mesoamerican Archive at Princeton University. He specializes in ancient Latin American cultures and has written and/or edited numerous books on the topic.

David Carrasco told CA that his primary motivation resulted from his work at the University of Chicago with Mircea Eliade, "the finest historian of religions of this century," and Paul Wheatley, "a leading urban geographer whose work on cities and symbols provides a context for my own work."

He continued: "My close connection to the Templo Mayor project in Mexico City has also led to a number of important collaborations and meetings with internationally known scholars. In 1979 I organized a major seminar, 'Center and Periphery: The Templo Mayor and the Aztec Empire,' which involved thirty major scholars from ten institutions in the United States and Mexico.

"The Templo Mayor is a paradigm of Mesoamerican culture and religion. I have established, with the help of colleagues at the University of Colorado, a five-year interdisciplinary study of the Templo Mayor and the seven thousand objects uncovered in the excavation. An archive of primary and secondary written sources plus photographs of the major treasures from the Templo Mayor is being set up at the University of Colorado to be used for teaching and research."