Students enrolled in SPA 750, a seminar in colonial Latin American Culture on the topic of creating knowledge from pre-Hispanic times to 1800, conducted research at the Special Collections Research Center. Graduate students enrolled in this class engaged with primary source materials mostly from the Lou Emma Wilson Mexicana Collection to study expressions of knowledge produced by indigenous peoples from the Americas and other colonial subjects. Some of the sources they had access to were facsimile editions of Mexican Codices (pre-Hispanic painted books) as well as manuscripts from the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Conducting research with these kinds of archival materials allowed students to learn about alternative ways of knowledge production distinct from dominant culture definitions that tend to be alphabetic and in traditional book form.