Funk Center Lecture Explores Woven World of Mayas

Florida Institute of Technology will host Gabrielle Vail, assistant professor of International and Area Studies at New College of Florida, as part of the Friends of Textiles Lecture Series Dec. 10 at 6 p.m. in the Denius Student Center’s Hartley Room on campus. Her lecture, “The Woven World: Textiles of the Pre-Columbian Past and Contemporary Maya Cultures,” will be preceded by a reception at 5:15 p.m. For indigenous Maya people living today, weaving on a backstrap loom is an ongoing tradition that links them to an ancient past with roots stemming back for more than a millennium into classic and preclassic Maya culture.Brocaded motifs supply information about the weaver’s community and often have mythological significance.