Rate My Professor David Stuart

David Stuart is the David and Linda Schele Professor of Mesoamerican Art and Writing in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also directs The Mesoamerica Center, fostering multidisciplinary studies on ancient American art and culture. He earned a PhD in Anthropology from Vanderbilt University in 1995 and a BA in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University in 1989, graduating summa cum laude. Before arriving at UT Austin in 2004, Stuart taught for eleven years at Harvard University in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and the Department of Anthropology. As the youngest-ever recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship from 1984 to 1989, he has advanced the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing for over four decades, with his early contributions featured in the PBS documentary Cracking the Maya Code in 2008.

Stuart's research centers on the archaeology and epigraphy of ancient Maya civilization, encompassing Maya iconography, religion, and political history. He conducts fieldwork at sites including Copan in Honduras, Palenque in Mexico, Piedras Negras, La Corona, and San Bartolo in Guatemala, and oversees the university's Casa Herrera research center in Antigua, Guatemala. His influential publications include the books Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya (Thames and Hudson, 2008), The Order of Days (Random House, 2012), King and Cosmos: A New Interpretation of the Aztec Calendar Stone (Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, 2022), and Spearthrower Owl: A Teotihuacan Ruler in Maya History (Dumbarton Oaks, 2024). Notable scholarly works co-authored with Stephen Houston comprise The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the Classic Maya (University of Texas Press, 2006) and Of Gods, Glyphs and Kings: Divinity and Rulership among the Classic Maya (Antiquity, 1996). Stuart's scholarship has profoundly shaped understandings of Classic Maya rulership, texts, and representations.