Three liberal arts students established a new club on Feb. 13 to unite the UT community in its passion for Mesoamerica.
Art history professor Julia Guernsey, who helped start the club, said UT has never had a pre-Columbian-focused club due to a lack of organized and strong undergraduate interest despite the University being a major center for studying the pre-Columbian world.
“We’ve always had a pretty vibrant program of graduate students studying ancient America, ancient Mesoamerica in particular,” Guernsey said. “There’s never been a comparable organized group of undergraduates, so it just seemed (like) a no-brainer to have a group that shares interests and cohorts.”
Guernsey gathered a group of students at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy’s annual Culture Fest on Feb. 5 to give a general presentation about Mesoamerica. After noticing the high turnout of students passionate about Mesoamerica, anthropology senior Caitlyn Castillo, anthropology junior Jade Gaither and art history junior Ana Maria Moratinos created the Undergraduate Society for the Ancient Americas.
“Guernsey wanted us to have a cohort of students that were all interested in this type of thing,” Castillo said. “From there, I was like, ‘Maybe we should make this a recurring thing: a club that’s gonna last longer than just one presentation.’”
The club held its first meeting on Feb. 13 and plans to host monthly meetings, weekly socials and trips to research centers around campus, such as the Mesoamerica Center and the Benson Latin American Collection. Castillo said the founders want to form a graduate student panel so undergraduate students can connect with graduate students and faculty.
“It’s really important (for) academic support and research because UT has a great program,” Moratinos said. “It’s going to be very enriching.”
Gaither said one of the club’s larger goals is to create a networking hub where students of all majors can foster a learning environment to gain hands-on experience for their future careers.
“Mesoamerican studies (is) so interdisciplinary, so we wanted linguistics to be a part of it (and include) art history and history majors, Latin American studies and Spanish (majors too),” Gaither said. “We wanted to build that same environment that we’ll eventually encounter later on down the line now and get networking with our peers.”
The club’s founders said they hope its members will form meaningful, lasting connections.
“I’m (already) benefiting from networking, and that sense of belonging has been really great,” Gaither said. “I’m really excited to grow that and have more people have that sense of community at UT.”
