[130] MTSU Plays Host To Anthropologist Reilly On Oct. 7

MTSU PLAYS HOST TO ANTHROPOLOGIST REILLY ON OCT. 7
Texas State Professor’s Lecture Targets Mesoamerican Art, Symbolism

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Oct. 4, 2010
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Professor Kevin E. Smith, 615-898-5958 or kesmith@mtsu.edu

(MURFREESBORO)—Texas State University professor and renowned anthropologist Dr. F. Kent Reilly will discuss war and conquest in the artistic styles of the Olmec civilization of south central Mexico in a free public lecture on Thursday, Oct. 7, at MTSU.
Reilly, who is director of the Center for the Study of Arts and Symbolism of Ancient America and a member of the anthropology department at Texas State-San Marcos, will speak on “Warfare, Transformation and Hallucinogenic Trance in Olmec Style Art” from 2:40 to 3:40 p.m. in the Tennessee Room of the James Union Building on campus.
“War and conquest was a constant theme in Classic and Post-Classic Mesoamerican art,” Reilly explained, referring to works of people living from central Mexico south to Honduras and Nicaragua in the centuries before the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
“Until recently, the theme of warfare was not recognized within the sculptural corpus of Olmec-style art. Evaluations of Olmec stylistic and symbolic data demonstrate that warfare representations created in the Middle Formative Period were couched in a supernatural framework based on feline and human interaction and transformation.”
Reilly said the recognition supports theories that these artistic representations of warfare are grounded in the larger works of the Mesoamerican Formative Period (1200-500 B.C.). Recognizing the theme in the earlier civilization also supports a link between the art and symbolism of the Olmec, who lived in the Gulf Coast region of Veracruz, and that of later Mesoamerican cultures, such as the Teotihuacan, the Maya and the Aztec.
Reilly’s lecture, which is sponsored by MTSU’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Middle Tennessee Anthropology Society, is part of the Anthropologica: The Anthropology in Action Visiting Lecture Series. The professor’s upcoming book, Visions to Another Realm: Art, Shamanism and Political Power in the Olmec World, will provide some of the latest information on the Olmecs.
For more information about the free Oct. 7 lecture, contact MTSU Professor Kevin E. Smith at 615-898-5958 or at kesmith@mtsu.edu.

Founded in 1911, Middle Tennessee State University is a Tennessee Board of Regents institution located in Murfreesboro and is the state’s largest public undergraduate institution. MTSU now boasts one of the nation’s first master’s degree programs in horse science, and the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, D.C., acclaims MTSU’s Master of Science in Professional Science degree—the only one in Tennessee—as a model program. This fall, MTSU unveiled three new doctoral degrees in the sciences.

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IN BRIEF: Texas State University professor and renowned anthropologist Dr. F. Kent Reilly will discuss war and conquest in the artistic styles of the Olmec civilization of south central Mexico in a free public lecture on Thursday, Oct. 7, at MTSU. Reilly, who is director of the Center for the Study of Arts and Symbolism of Ancient America and a member of the anthropology department at Texas State-San Marcos, will speak on “Warfare, Transformation and Hallucinogenic Trance in Olmec Style Art” from 2:40 to 3:40 p.m. in the Tennessee Room of the James Union Building on campus. For more information, contact MTSU Professor Kevin E. Smith at 615-898-5958 or at kesmith@mtsu.edu.

For MTSU news and information, visit www.mtsunews.com.

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