Jennifer R. Saracino

Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Assistant Professor, Art

About Jennifer R. Saracino

Dr. Jennifer Saracino is an assistant professor of Art History. Her research focuses on Indigenous cartographic traditions of Central Mexico, cross-cultural interactions between mendicant friars and Indigenous communities, and the impact of these exchanges on the visual culture of early colonial Mexico. Her works also investigates Nahua relationships to the natural and built environment as reflected in the visual culture of early colonial Mexico. Her work has appeared in the journals Imago Mundi and Artl@s Bulletin as well as the edited volume Mapping Nature Across the Americas (University of Chicago, 2020) and the forthcoming Collective Creativity and Artistic Agency in Colonial Latin America (University of Florida, 2022.) Her current book project focuses on the Uppsala Map of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the earliest known map of Mexico City painted by Indigenous artists after Spanish Conquest. Her research and scholarship have been supported with fellowships from the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection, the Newberry Library, the American Society for Environmental History, and the John Carter Brown Library.

Degrees

Joint Ph.D in Art History and Latin American Studies, MA in Art History, BA in Art History (Spanish minor)

Selected Publications

PUBLICATIONS: PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES
2021 “Dating the Mapa Uppsala of Mexico-Tenochtitlan,” Imago Mundi (first co-author with Barbara E. Mundy), Vol. 73, Part No. 1: 2-15. (Taylor & Francis).
2018 “Indigenous stylistic and conceptual innovation in the Uppsala Map of Mexico City (c. 1540),” Cartographic Styles and Discourse, ARTL@S Bulletin vol. 7, 2 (École Normale Supérieure, Centre national pour la recherche scientifique, and Purdue Scholarly Publishing Services).
PUBLICATIONS: BOOK CHAPTERS (Peer-reviewed)
2023

(forthcoming)

“Indigenous Artistic Practice & Collaboration at the Colegio de Santa Cruz in Mexico City (1534-1575)” Collective Creativity and Artistic Agency in Colonial Latin America, eds. Maya Stanfield-Mazzi and Margarita Vargas-Betancourt (University Press of Florida, 2023.)

2021 “Staking claim on native lands: the symbolic power of indigenous cartographic convention in the Ayer map of Teotihuacan Mexico (1560) and its copies,” Mapping Nature Across the Americas, eds. James Ackerman & Kathy Brosnan (University of Chicago Press, 2021.)

Courses Taught

Before the Americas: Art of the Aztec, Maya, & Inka (formerly Introduction to Pre-Columbian Art), Global Renaissance, and Pre-Columbian: Aztecs and Incas.

Areas of Study

Colonial Mexico, the early modern trans-Atlantic

Projects

The Uppsala Map of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the Badianus Herbal, the Florentine Codex, the visual culture of the Manila Galleon

Research Interests

Indigenous cartographic traditions of Central Mexico, Central Mexican pictorial codices, Mesoamerican art, cross-cultural interactions between mendicant friars and Indigenous communities in central Mexico, Nahua relationships to the natural and built environment as reflected in the visual culture of early colonial Mexico