Areas of Expertise
- Spanish American Literature and Historiography
- Nahua intellectuals of the 16th and 17th Centuries
- Mexican Studies
- Postcolonial Studies
- Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x Literatures
- American Studies
Education
B.A. University of California-Berkeley (2007)
M.A. Purdue University (2011)
Ph.D. University of California-Berkeley (2020)
Courses
- RLSP 104 (S) CON Intensive Intermediate Spanish, Upper Level
- RLSP 209/LATS 209 (F) SEM Spanish for Heritage Speakers
- RLSP 230 SEM Mexican Literature and Cultural Production (not offered 2026/27)
- RLSP 231 (F) SEM Indigenous Writers of Colonial Mexico and Peru
- RLSP 342 (S) SEM Reading Sor Juana: “única poetisa americana, musa décima,”
- RLSP 405 SEM Alternative American Literatures: From the Indigenous Chronicle to the Latin American & Chic. Novel (not offered 2026/27)
Publications
Carlos Macías Prieto received his Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages & Literatures in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds a MA in American Studies from Purdue University and a BA in Chicano Studies from UC Berkeley.
Macías Prieto’s work has been funded by institutions such as the American Council on Learned Societies and the John Carter Brown Library, and his articles have been published in Early American Literature and The Latin Americanist. Macías Prieto’s book manuscript, Nahua Writing at a Moment of Crisis: Domingo Chimalpahin’s Preservation of the Cemanahuac Archive in Colonial Mexico, is currently under review.
Nahua Writing at a Moment of Crisis examines the oeuvre of one of the most significant Nahua historians writing in Nahuatl in early-seventeenth-century New Spain, Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin. This study emphasizes Chimalpahin’s rootedness in his Nahua identity and in a Nahua historiographical tradition, and his implicit and explicit critiques of aspects of Spanish rule. By putting Chimalpahin in conversation with European authors and Christian friars—and, briefly, the writing of Mexica historian don Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc—it argues that in his Nahuatl texts, Chimalpahin is responding to the writing and discourse of these authors to refute European views of the pre-Hispanic past, highlight colonial violence, and disavow the idea that Mesoamerican society was inevitably destined to perish. While his Spanish-language revisions in the Browning Manuscript—a transcription of Spanish historian Francisco López de Gómara’s La conquista de México —might suggest a deviation from this viewpoint, the book posits that Chimalpahin uses farce to exaggerate Gómara’s history and make it unbelievable (at least to Nahua readers)—ensuring that his critical perspective and his specific Nahua, historical voice remain consistent across his writing, both in Spanish and Nahuatl.
Grants
- American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship (2023)
- Finalist, Maureen Ahern Doctoral Dissertation Award in Colonial Latin American Studies, Latin American Studies Association (2023)
- Class of 1945 World Fellowship, Williams College (2023)
Committees
- Compensation Committee from Steering Committee