Jessica Christie
art histories
PhD, University of Texas at Austin
christiej@ecu.edu
https://jessicajoycechristie.wixsite.com/home
Jessica Christie specializes in the visual culture of the ancient and contemporary Maya and Inka as well as rock art in the Americas. Her academic interests focus on three-dimensional environments framed by architecture and sculpture and the constructed performance spaces and landscapes. Her fields of interest have expanded from pre-contact to post-contact societies which she sees as linked and she explores their vibrant connections under the lenses of memory and Post-Colonialism. Dr. Christie has conducted field investigations at pre-contact Maya sites for over twenty years and observed contemporary Maya ceremonies for ten years. Since 1997, her field trips have focused on the Andes. Dr. Christie holds an M.A. degree in art history from the University of Nuremberg-Erlangen in Germany, a second M.A. specializing in Pre-Columbian art from the University of Texas in Austin as well as a Ph.D. degree in Latin American Studies from the same institution.
Areas of Research
Indigenous cultures, epistemolgies, and values in the American Southwest, Northwest, Hawai`i, Maya area, and the Andes; Heritage and Tourism Studies
My work has always been multi-disciplinary approaching visual culture through methodologies from Art History, Archaeology, and Anthropology. My Master’s thesis at the University of Texas in Austin explored the Pecos pictographs in West Texas. On the doctoral level, my focus shifted toward the ancient Maya and performance space of their Period Ending ceremonies. During my career as professor at East Carolina University, I have published about Maya palaces and elite residences (2003, 2006). Since 2009, I have turned toward landscape studies in the Americas (Landscapes of Origin, 2009) as well as with a world-wide focus in the co-edited volume Political Landscapes of Capital Cities (2016). My single-authored book Memory Landscapes of the Inka Sculpted Outcrops (2016) brought Inka carved rock complexes to life from before the Spanish invasion to the present. More recently, my theoretical focus is strongly shifting toward the wide impacts of Colonialism and questions of how to de-colonize as we interweave the past with the present for a regenerative future. This is a major objective of my recent book Earth Politics of Cultural Landscapes and Intangible Heritage: Three Case Studies in the Americas (2021, University Press of Florida). I am working on parallel case studies in Hawai`i and in the Maya area driven by my interests in bringing together different knowledge systems.
Courses Taught
Art History surveys
Art and Power in Mesoamerica
Native North American Art and Ritual
Art and Landscape in the Andes
Cultural Heritage and Tourism
CV
Teaching Philosophy
My teaching philosophy centers on critical thinking through visual culture. I introduce visual works and we examine in which ways style and content reflect cultural knowledge and place based values. Students are challenged to critically connect visual insights with epistemologies shaped by spirituality, land, and socio-economics in corresponding regions and time periods. In an A paper, a student has to demonstrate ability to connect “dots” from multiple sources.