Rate My Professor Mark Lentz

Mark Lentz is an associate professor of Latin American history in the Department of History and Political Science at Utah Valley University. His research focuses on colonial Mexico, Central America, and the Atlantic World, particularly interpreters in the conquest and colonization of Yucatan and interethnic relations in colonial and early national Mexico and Guatemala. He recently published articles on indigenous-African relations in eighteenth-century Guatemala and Belize and the role of Jesuits in translation, conversion, and pedagogy in colonial Yucatan. He holds a Ph.D. (2009) and M.A. (2004) in Colonial Latin American History from Tulane University, and a B.A. in History (2001) from Nebraska Wesleyan University. At UVU, Lentz chairs the General Education Committee and has led student travel study programs, including a 2015 Short-Term Multicultural Experience in Spain along the Camino de Santiago and a 2016 Fall Break Domestic Multicultural Experience tracing the Dominguez-Escalante expedition.

Lentz's publications include the monograph Murder in Merida, 1792: Violence, Factions, and the Law (University of New Mexico Press, 2018) and forthcoming works such as From Indigenous Interpreters to Creole Control: Race, Translation, and Exclusion in Yucatan, 1560-1633 (University of Nebraska Press, 2025) and a chapter "The Prehispanic and Colonial Exchange of Perishable Goods in and through the Northern Transversal Strip: Achiote, Cacao, Salt, and Exotic Feathers" in Living Between Worlds (University of Alabama Press, 2025). His articles, including “Castas, Creoles, and the Rise of a Maya Lingua Franca in Eighteenth-Century Yucatan” (Hispanic American Historical Review, 2017), earned the 2018 RMCLAS Best Article Prize; an article on creole and African-descent fluency and literacy in indigenous languages also received recognition. Recent publications feature “The Friar and the Maya: Diego de Landa and the ‘Account of the Things of Yucatan’” (HAHR, 2025) and “Where Have All the Archives Gone? Yucatán’s Missing and Mobile Municipal Archives” (Anglia, 2024). He has contributed book reviews to American Historical Review and HAHR. Awards include the Phi Alpha Theta Faculty Advisor Research Grant (2024), R. David Parsons Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library (2015-2016), Fulbright Graduate Fellowship in Spain (2005-2006), and a Mellon Foundation fellowship at the Vatican Film Library (2017). Lentz participated in two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institutes (2012, 2013) and delivers presentations at conferences such as the Society of Early Americanists (2023), American Society for Ethnohistory (2022), and public lectures at Orem Rotary Club and Snow College (2025). He teaches courses including HIST 2050G: Modern Latin America and HIST 4990: Senior Research Thesis Writing Component.