Dear PSIP Review Committee: I am writing this letter as required in order to submit my application to the Professor Salary Incentive Program for the 2015 cycle. Having advanced the mission of the University, the College of Humanities and Public Affairs and the Department of History through my interdisciplinary, prolific and consequential scholarship and research mentoring of both graduate and undergraduate students, I believe that my accomplishments merit my reception of a PSIP award. This brief dossier will provide proof of this excellence in addition to establishing the ways that I have integrated my research with my teaching and service. In doing so, it will reveal how my work since my promotion to Full Professor and as an endowed professor in the Honors College has had a significant impact on my field, my college, this university, and the wider historical profession. MY RESEARCH ACCOMPLISHMENTS SINCE MY APPLICATION FOR PROMOTION TO FULL PROFESSOR My research productivity in the rank of full Professor has far exceeded the required one book or monograph (or) three (3) published articles and the presentation of two (2) conference papers necessary for promotion to the rank of Full Professor. I have greatly surpassed these requirements. Since my application to promotion for Full Professor in 2009 I have published four (4) peer-reviewed books or monographs, and seventeen (17) peer-reviewed articles or book chapters. Added to this, I have also presented sixty-one (61) research papers and keynote addresses at conferences throughout the world since 2010. Since the introduction of the annual merit based review of faculty, I have achieved the maximum composite score of 5.0 (or the consistent ranking of exceptional) in all three categories of teaching, research and service for the 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 academic years, and the general ranking of Outstanding/Exceptional since the suspension of the numerical system in our college in 2010. My scholarship on the history and culture of the Maya people of Yucatán and the history of Spanish Inquisition in Mexico now constitutes a substantial body of research which has been internationally recognized throughout the world (see the Research Matrix D and other supporting material). These publications include a total of four (4) peer reviewed books or monographs, with another three (3) books under contract or in press; two (2) other peer-reviewed edited volumes (currently under review), as well as two (2) other primary source translations and critical editions (under review or in press) in combination with a total of fifty-one (51) peer reviewed articles and book chapters (seventeen published while in the rank of full professor), several dozen other smaller publications (twenty-one of which were published while in rank), and more than 100 international and national academic conference papers presented. Many of my research publications have been very favorably reviewed in prominent journals such as the Hispanic American Historical Review, the Journal of Latin American Studies, the Journal of Ethnohistory, and the Journal of Military History. Moreover, several of my articles, according to many of the major scholars in my discipline, have had a great impact on revising the historiography and literature in my field. The co-authored piece (with Dr. Matthew Restall) published in the journal Ethnohistory according to recent reviews and comments by some of the foremost scholars in the field of Colonial Latin American History has revolutionized the historiography. Similarly, Dr. David Stuart, a Maya scholar from the University of Texas at Austin and one of the most prominent scholars on the Maya, praised the value of my contribution on the provenience and origins of the pre-Hispanic Maya hieroglyphic codex known as the Madrid Codex. Dr. Stuart stated at a recent international conference in México that in this article 1 entitled “Papal Bulls, Extirpators and the Madrid Codex” I have managed to “do what no scholar since the founding of the field of Maya Studies in the nineteenth century has done…to definitively discover the place of origins and provenience of a pre-Hispanic Maya text….” The book where this paper was published, The Madrid Codex (Univ. of Colorado Press, 2004), won two publication awards, including the Colorado Endowment of the Humanities Best Manuscript Award (2004), and the University of Colorado Press Manuscript Award (2004). And finally, the result of much of my research on the Inquisition culminated in the completion of the exceptionally well-reviewed book The Holy Office of the Inquisition in New Spain, 1571-1819 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) which I am including as the scholarly artifact for PSIP consideration (see summary of reviews in Supplemental Materials). Several measures can be used to judge the impact of my work on my chosen subfield and the many fields with which my work intersects. The History Department guidelines emphasize the need for evidence of a “national reputation” as a scholar for promotion to Full Professor. The published reviews of my work in various journals testify to my achievement not only as a scholar with a “national reputation” but also a researcher with an “international reputation” as a first- class scholar. My research has been widely cited in the monographic and journal literature in my field. Furthermore, several of my previous important publications have been translated into Spanish, German, and Russian and much of my research has been cited in publications throughout the world. I have also been invited both nationally and internationally to speak and teach as an expert scholar on colonial Maya culture and religion. While in rank colleagues and universities in Germany, Slovakia, France, México and Spain have formally invited me to give research presentations and teach advanced level intensive week long seminars in colonial Maya documentation. I have also been invited to serve on M.A. and Ph.D. dissertation committees internationally. Equally important evidence of my national and international reputation can be found in the awards, grants and fellowships that I have won in rank. In 2010, I received a University Foundation award for Research and in 2015 I won the equally important University Foundation award for Teaching. I have also won College level Research (2004), Teaching (2003) and Service Awards (2005). Moreover, in 2013, as a testament to the quality and active level of my on-going research, I was awarded international recognition for my research publications and my service to the preservation and advocacy for the Maya Culture by the Mexican National Council of Culture and the Arts (CONACULTA), the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the Secretary of Culture for the State of Campeche, and the Autonomous University of Campeche (UAC). In recognition and tribute to the significance of my research publications and my public service to the advancement of Yucatec Maya Culture, I was awarded the prestigious recognition and tribute award at the annual international conference of Maya Culture on November 5, 2013 in Campeche, México. This award serves as a testament to my merits as a researcher. For those who study the Maya culture, this is the highest academic research award given in Mexico in recognition of a scholar’s valuable contributions to the field. MY TEACHING AND MENTORING ACCOMPLISHMENTS SINCE MY APPLICATION FOR PROMOTION TO FULL PROFESSOR Both quantitative and qualitative measures indicate that students are very satisfied with my courses (see Matrix B). During the past several consecutive years since my submission of my application for promotion, on aggregate Student evaluations, I received among the highest evaluations in the entire department. Faculty Peer-Reviewers in the past have stated that I am a “talented classroom teacher” with often an “unusually high level of student participation” in my 2 courses. I have also published a number of teaching materials and textbooks, including a co- authored textbook that appeared late in 2006 (with Walther Kirchner) History of Western Civilization to 1500, HarperCollins Publishers, College Series, 2006. Similarly, along with several other authors, I was also awarded a contract by Houghton Mifflin (2011) to publish a new World History textbook, Expeditions in World History: Tracing the Dynamics of Continuity and Change combined with integrative web-based “expeditions” into World Cultures. In terms of Graduate level teaching and mentoring, I am one of the History Department’s most active members of the Graduate faculty mentoring dozens of M.A. students in their research (see Supplemental Materials). In terms of total production of MA Thesis projects, since 1975 to present I have directed 35% of all of the M.A. Thesis Projects completed in the History Department and I am currently mentoring half a dozen more (see Research Vita and Supplemental materials). Even though I am now also a 50% administrator, I continue to serve as one of the most active faculty members on a large number of graduate committees. I am also very active in mentoring undergraduate research on campus. I have also served as the mentor and helped five undergraduate students apply for and receive the prestigious Fulbright grant since 2010. Similarly I also have researched and published in the past with my students and I am currently in the process of publishing a co-authored book entitled Theaters of Punishment: The Mexican Inquisition’s Auto de Fe General of 1601 with one of my past graduate students, Justin Duncan. Together we have also submitted two NEH digital humanities grant proposals in 2014/2015 as well. MY SERVICE ACCOMPLISHMENTS SINCE PROMOTION TO FULL PROFESSOR Much of my academic service, like my research and teaching, is inspired by a commitment to racial, ethnic and religious diversity. I have far out-served the history department’s required 3 service points a year. My service load in the point system is equivalent to 40 points of service on average a year since my promotion to Full Professor.