Biography
Beginning his career in Massachusetts, Mark Christensen joined the History Department of Brigham Young University in 2018. He earned a BA from BYU, MA from the University of Utah, and a Ph.D. in 2010 from Penn State. As a Colonial Latin American Historian, his specialization includes Nahua (Aztec) and Maya ethnohistory in central Mexico and Yucatan, and the translation of Nahuatl and Maya texts. His research explores the colonial experience of Nahuas and Mayas to illustrate how they negotiated their everyday religious, economic, and social lives with Spanish colonialism. He is the author of six books and numerous book chapters and articles. His most recent book, Aztec and Maya Apocalypses (Oklahoma, 2022) employs religious texts written in Aztec and Maya to reveal what the Indigenous people were taught regarding the Christian Apocalypse, and how it was received and familiarized within preexisting worldviews. His current project involves the translation and analysis of Maya texts on the Passion of Christ. He lives in Mapleton, Utah, with his wife, Natalie, and their five children.