Claremont, Calif. (October 10, 2011) — Pitzer College Associate Professor Carina Johnson has authored Cultural Hierarchy in Sixteenth-Century Europe: The Ottomans and Mexicans published by Cambridge University Press. Johnson teaches history at Pitzer College.
The book argues that sixteenth-century European encounters with the newly discovered Mexicans (in the Aztec Empire) and the newly dominant Ottoman Empire can only be understood in relation to the cultural and intellectual changes wrought by the Reformation. Johnson chronicles the resultant creation of cultural hierarchy. Starting at the beginning of the sixteenth century, when ideas of European superiority were not fixed, this book traces the formation of those ideas through proto-ethnographies, news pamphlets, Habsburg court culture, gifts of treasure and the organization of collections.
Cultural Hierarchy in Sixteenth-Century Europe: The Ottomans and Mexicans is available through major booksellers. For more information, please visit: Cambridge University Press.
