Director, School of Art, 100 Fine Arts  713-743-3001 University of Houston rkoontz@uh.edu Houston, TX 77204

Professional Experience

2012-Professor, University of Houston

2007-2012 Associate Professor, University of Houston

2001-2007 Assistant Professor, University of Houston

2001 Associate Professor, University of Texas/El Paso

1995-2001 Assistant Professor, University of Texas/El Paso

Education

Ph. D. 1994 University of Texas/Austin, Art History

Dissertation: The Iconography of El Tajín, Veracruz, Mexico (Linda Schele, advisor)

M.A. 1988   University of Texas/Austin, Art History

B.A. 1985    American College (now University) in Paris

Publications

Books

2009. Lightning Gods and Feathered Serpents: The Public Sculpture of El Tajín. Austin: University of Texas Press.

2009. Blood and Beauty: Organized Violence in the Art and Archaeology of Ancient Mesoamerica and Central America. Editor and Introductory Chapter (with Heather Orr), sole-authored chapter contribution.  Los Angeles: UCLA, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

2008. Mexico (6th edition), with Michael Coe. London: Thames and Hudson.

2002. Mexico (5th edition), with Michael Coe. London: Thames and Hudson.

2001. Landscape and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica, senior editor, with Kathryn Reese-Taylor and Annabeth Headrick (co-editors). Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Co-authored the preface and the chapter entitled “The Cultural Poetics of Power and Space in Ancient Mesoamerica” (with Kathryn Reese-Taylor) and oversaw the volume as a whole.

Selected Articles/Book Chapters

*refereed/peer reviewed

2012. Classic Art. In Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology, edited by Deborah L. Nichols and Christopher Pool, pp. 807-818.

*2011. El Tajin: el arte del Clasico y el surgimiento de la elite de las tierras bajas de Veracruz. In Seis ciudades antiguas de Mesoamérica: Sociedad y medio ambiente, 235-249. México, D.F.: Insituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

*2010. Visual Culture Studies in Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica 20(2) Fall 2009, Cambridge University Press. Refereed article reviewing the state of visual cultural studies in my field.

*2009. Social Identity and Cosmology at El Tajín. In The Art of Urbanism, edited by Leonardo López Luján and William Fash, pp. 260-289. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

2009. The Place of the Palma in Classic Veracruz Iconography. In Memorias del 53ero Internacional Congreso de Americanistas, México [cd].

*2008. Iconographic Interaction Between El Tajín and South Central Veracruz. In Classic Veracruz: Cultural Currents in the Ancient Gulf Lowlands, edited by Philip Arnold III and Christopher Pool, pp. 323-359. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

*2008. Ballcourt Rites, Paradise, and the Origins of Power in Ancient Veracruz. In Pre-Columbian Landscapes of Creation and Origin, edited by John E. Staller, pp. 11-29. New York: Springer.

2007. Space in Ancient Mesoamerica. In Science, Religion and Society: History, Culture, Controversy, edited by Gary Laderman and Arri Eisen, pp. 415-422. New York: M.E. Sharpe.

*2007. Olmecs. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd ed., edited by W. A. Darity, Jr., vol. 6:39. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.

*2006. Performing Coatepec: The Raising of the Banners Festival Among the Mexica. In Space and Spatial Analysis in Archaeology, edited by Elizabeth Robertson et al., pp. 371-380. Calgary and Albuquerque: University of Calgary Press and University of New Mexico Press.

*2006. with Annabeth Headrick. Ancestral Burdens in Gulf Coast Cultures. Ancient America Special Publication No. 1: 184-207.

2004. Ancient American Histories, feature review for Latin American Research Review vol. 39(1): 302-313.

*2002. Terminal Classic Sacred Space and Factional Politics. In Heart of Creation: the Mesoamerican World and the Legacy of Linda Schele, edited by Andrea Stone, pp. 101-117. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

1999. Making My Space on the Line: The Art of Anna Jaquez and Gloria Osuna-Pérez. In Imágenes e Historias: Chicana Altar-Inspired Art, edited by Constance Cortez, pp. 29-34. Boston: Tufts University Gallery.

*1998. Re-inscribing Aesthetics in Non-Western Art. Art and Academe 10(2): 22-31.

Selected Grants/Fellowships/Awards

2009. University of Houston, Small Grants Program

2008. University of Houston, Small Grants Program

2003. National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend.

2002. Summer Research Fellow, Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University.