Julien and Pastrano Awarded Second NEH Grant | | Western Michigan University
Julien and Pastrano Awarded Second NEH Grant
Catherine Julien (Professor of History) and Pablo Pastrano-Perez (Assistant Professor of Spanish) have been awarded a second $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant will allow them to continue their work transcribing and translating a body of documents (some 60) by members of the Cabeza de Vaca expedition up the Paraguay to the Pantanal, the largest wetland region in the Americas located on the border between Brazil and Bolivia. There were approximately 18 Spaniards who produced the expedition documents, all of which are all originals written in their own hand. Having a "community of writers" and getting to know them through their writing is something extraordinary about this material. Unlike most of what was written about the Americas, which was intended for officials in Spain or a European audience, this trove of documents was internal to the exploration itself and was simply used to guide its progress. It offers a more candid look at the process of exploration.