Edward Anthony Polanco

Dr. Edward Polanco is a Kuskatanchanej scholar of Mesoamerica. Although he was born in Los Angeles, CA, his ancestors are from Kuskatan (Western and Central El Salvador) and his parents fled their homeland due to political violence and instability. Dr. Polanco is committed to amplifying and centering Indigenous voices and perspectives in his research, his classroom, and on Virginia Tech’s campus. To achieve this, he works closely with the Latinx and Native communities on campus, and more broadly in the US and Latin America. He also serves as the Director of the Indigenous Studies Program at Virginia Tech which oversees the American Indian Studies Minor.

Dr. Polanco is working on a book manuscript titled In Cintli/Ne Sinti: Maize and the Nahua World from Mexico to Central America which explores the multifaceted reciprocal relationship Nahuas have had with Zea mays since time immemorial. Maize is a gift, pahtli (salubrious material), sustenance, and a center of ceremony that shapes Nahua identity and resilience throughout Mesoamerica.

His first book, Healing Like Our Ancestors: The Nahua Tiçitl, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Central Mexico; 1535-1660 (University of Arizona Press) examines healing ceremonial specialists among 16th and 17th-century Nahua people (Indigenous groups with diverse communities in Mexico and El Salvador) in Central Mexico. Dr. Polanco carefully analyzes the different healing tasks women and men had in their communities, he also unpacks the importance of women as titiçih (healing specialists), and he unearths how Spanish authorities attacked Native healers as they attempted to evangelize and hispanize Indigenous populations in New Spain (today known as Mexico and Central America).

He has published on Indigenous healing knowledge, and gendered understandings of the human body. Various fellowships and institutions have funded Dr. Polanco’s work, including the Fulbright-García Robles research grant, FLAS summer and AY fellowships, and a Newberry Library National Endowment for the Humanities Long-Term Fellowship. For more information and updates, please visit Professor Polanco's personal website.

Dr. Polanco’s teaching interests include Native history, Latin America, Mexico, El Salvador, Mesoamerica, sorcery, race, gender, and class. He has introduced various new courses to Virginia Tech that challenge students to think about the past from Indigenous perspectives.