Dr. Owen H. Jones

Dr. Owen H. Jones, PhD

Faculty - Undergraduate
Generic Portrait Outline
Visiting Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies
Email
ojones@soka.edu
Phone
949-269-5534

Dr. Owen H. Jones is a specialist in Indigenous legal structures and the adaptations that Indigenous peoples in southern Mexico and Guatemala had on the development of the law at the local and regional levels. He speaks, reads, and writes two Indigenous languages of the Americas, Yukatek Maya and K’iche’ Maya. He is also fluent in the Spanish language. His disciplines are History and Latin American Studies. He is currently working on a book entitled - K’iche’ Justice: Legal Culture and Practice in Local and Regional Law in Colonial Highland Guatemala, which is under consideration at the University of Texas Press.

  • Ph.D. in History, University of California, Riverside, June 12, 2009
  • M.A. in History, University of California, Riverside, June 2002
  • B.A. in History, University of California, Riverside, August 2000
  • B.A. in Spanish Language, University of California, Riverside, August 2000
  • INTS 130: Intro to Latin American Studies
  • PACBASIN 100: Intro to the Pacific Basin

My current research examines civil and criminal court records from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries written in the Spanish and in the K'iche' (Quiche) languages to determine how the K'iche' Maya, an Indigenous ethnicity from the Guatemalan highlands, confronted Spanish colonial law and negotiated hegemony and justice. I examine local and regional law and the creation of legal discourse via Indigenous justices and officials. My work includes an interest in Indigenous literacy, culture, and society and the greater impacts that Indigenous interactions had and continue to have in international contexts.

  • “Indigenous Language Literacy in Colonial Central America.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Oxford University Press, 2014—. Article published July 18, 2022. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.1007.
  • «Ah Tzib Rech Cabildo, “Él quien es escribano para el cabildo.” Cultura y práctica legal k’ichee’ en los siglos XVII y XVIII», en Yanna Yannakakis, Martina Schrader-Kniffki, y Luis Alberto Arrioja Díaz Viruell, editores, Los indios ante la justicia local, intérpretes, oficiales y litigantes en Neuva España y Guatemala (siglos XVI – XVIII), ( Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico, Colegio de Michoacan y Emory University, 2019), pp. 57 – 76
  • «Chinamitales: defensores y justicias k’ichee’ en las comunidades indígenas del altiplano de Guatemala colonial» en Histórica, Vol. 40, Núm. 2, editado por José Carlos de la Puente Luna, «Jurisdicciones indígenas en Nueva España y Perú», December, 2016, pp. 81 – 109.
  • “Language Politics and Indigenous Language Documents: Evidence in Colonial K’ichee’ Litigation in Seventeenth Century Highland Guatemala” The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History, 73:3 (July 2016), pp. 349 – 370.
  • “‘One or Two of my Living Words,’ Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century K’iche’ Testaments from Guatemala,” in Mark Z. Christensen & Jonathan Truitt, Editors, Native Wills From the Colonial Americas: Dead Giveaways in a New World, University of Utah Press: October 30, 2015, pp. 138 – 151.
  • 2017 - 2024, Annual Contract Faculty, Sinclair Community College
  • 2016 - 2017, Visiting Assistant Professor, Southeast Missouri State University
  • 2011 - 2016, Assistant Professor, Valdosta State University
  • 2010 - 2011, Lecturer, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
  • NEH Summer Institute “Pictorial Histories and Myth-Histories: “Graphic Novels” of the Mixtecs and Aztecs”
    $3,300.00 June 29, 2014 – July 26, 2014
  • Faculty Research Seed Grant: Valdosta State University
    $5,000.00 October 19, 2012 – June 30, 2012
  • Start-up Fund: Valdosta State University
    $3,000.00 August 3, 2011 – June 30, 2012
  • Marcoux Fellowship for Research in Latin American History
  • History Department, University of California, Riverside
    $1,162.00 July 14, 2008 – August 15, 2008
  • Foreign Language Area Studies (F.L.A.S.) Fellowship,
    Duke University Advanced Yucatec Maya
    $5,978.00 June 3, 2008 – July 13, 2008
  • UC MEXUS Dissertation Fellowship University of California
    $12.000.00 Sept. 2004 - June 2006
  • Dissertation Research Grant, History Dept, University of California, Riverside
  • $7,000.00 Sept. 2004 - December 2004
  • Foreign Language Area Studies (F.L.A.S.) Fellowship, University of Wisconsin, Madison Intermediate Yucatec Maya
    $5.978.00 June 6, 2004 – August 6, 2004