Multepal

This is the worksite of the Multepal Project at the University of Virginia. The purpose of the site is to provide participating students and scholars a platform to build out a thematic research collection associated with Mesoamerican society and culture, one of the primary goals of Multepal. This collection consists of an encyclopedia-like topic map, a bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and annotations of primary sources. We are currently focused on developing a digital critical edition of the K'iche' Mayan book of creation, the Popol Wuj, and so the resources in the collection all pertain to that text. 

The Multepal project was concevied originally to support a collaborative text-encoding project for a graduate seminar in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the University of Virginia. We chose to call our project multepal because it reflects the goal of our project to form a collaboratively produced and governed resource that is respectful of data sovereignty. In Yukatekan, the term refers to a precolumbian institution of "joint rule" or "council rulership," a collective model of political organization and governance. In addition, the root metaphor of the word is quite close to "common-weatlth," as mul refers to "cosa hecha o que es de comunidad o de común" (Barrera Vasquéz 1995: 538) and tepal refers to "prosperidada, abundancia, gloria y contento y tenerlo" (785). In keeping with the values implied by the word, we recognize that our efforts to produce an edition of the Popol Wuj are equally collective, and we have been honored to collaborate with José Augusto Yac Noj (Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala) and Allen Christenson (Brigham Young University) along the way. We hope to continue to develop the site in the coming years, and to incorporate new ideas and voices into this digital reading and research experience.