Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Stephen Houston serves as Dupee Family Professor of Social Sciences. He has prepared many books and articles, including, most recently, Temple of the Night Sun: A Royal Tomb at El Diablo, Guatemala (Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, 2015); The Life Within: Classic Maya and the Matter of Permanence (Yale University Press, 2014), winner of the PROSE Award for Art History and Criticism; The Gifted Passage: Young Men in Classic Maya Art and Text (Yale University Press, 2018); and A Maya Universe in Stone (Getty Research Institute, 2021). He also co-curated “Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea,” an exhibit exploring ecological aesthetics in Maya civilization. He has been honored with a MacArthur “genius grant,” along with fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Dumbarton Oaks, the Clark Art Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Gallery of Art. In 2018–19, he served as the inaugural Kislak Chair at the Library of Congress. In recognition of his scholarship, the President of Guatemala awarded him, in 2011, the Grand Cross of the Order of the Quetzal, the country’s highest honor. He is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. His Ph.D. is from Yale University.