Jordana Dym

Professor of History   

Jordana Dym's research and teaching interests include Latin America, the history of cartography, book history, and public history. She teaches a Latin American survey, regional courses on Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico, and topics courses on the history of travel and travel writing, war and peace, maps, and publics. Engaging with written, visual, and aural sources, her classes encourage students to present findings in papers, newspaper articles, sound stories, websites, and exhibitions. She offers a first-year seminar on maps in the world and enjoys building international connections for and with students in travel programs in France, Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, and Puerto Rico. She has twice directed Skidmore's Latin American studies minor program, and was the inaugural director of the John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative (MDOCS) (2014-2018), developing the DocLab, Skidmore-Saratoga Memory Project, and Storytellers' Institute.

Jordana's publications include From Sovereign Villages to National States: City, State and Federation in Central America, 1759-1839 (2006) and Mapping Travel: The Origins and Conventions of Western Journey Maps Brill Research Perspectives in Map History (2021), articles in French, English and Spanish, and an exhibition catalog, Declarando Independencias (Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico, 2010). She has collaborated with colleagues in the Americas, Europe, and beyond as editor of Mesoamérica (2008-2013), guest editor of special issues for Araucaria and Colonial Latin America Review, and co-edited four books: Politics, Economy and Society in Bourbon Central America (with C. Belaubre, 2007), Napoléon et les Amériques (with C. Belaubre and J. Savage, 2009; English edition, 2010), Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader (with K. Offen, 2011); Las declarations de independencia: Los textos fundamentals de las independencias americanas (with A. Ávila and E. Pani, 2013); Centroamérica durante las revoluciones atlánticas: el vocabulario político, 1750-1850 (with S. Herrera Mena).