Allison Caplan is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Yale University specializing in the art of Late Postclassic and early colonial Mesoamerica, especially the Nahuas (Aztecs) of Central Mexico. Her research explores Nahua aesthetics, material value, and the relationship between language and visual culture. Her first book, Flickering Creations: Concepts of Nahua Precious Art (Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2026), examines Indigenous theories of beauty and craftsmanship in featherwork, gemstones, and metals.

At the Lab, Allison will be writing the first chapter of a new book, entitled The Story-Circle Manuscript: Colonial Authorship in the Drafts of the Florentine Codex. The first in-depth study of the earliest drafts of The General History of the Things of New Spain—a history of Indigenous Nahua society and culture created in early colonial Mexico—her project reconstructs the illustrated manuscript as a dynamic, multivocal dialogue between multiple Nahua and Spanish writers, scribes, artists, and translators. By drawing out contributors’ distinctive voices and their interactions on the page, The Story-Circle Manuscript shows how scribal and artistic dialogue served as a structure for the work’s colonial creators to engage with and transform the Indigenous knowledge traditions they recorded.