Jennifer Saracino, Ph.D.

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 Collective Creativity and Artistic Agency in Colonial Latin America (University of Florida, 2023.)

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.  Dr. Saracino received her joint PhD in Art History and Latin American studies from Tulane University.

For 2023-2024, Dr. Saracino will be in residence at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA as a Barbara Thom Postdoctoral Fellow. 

At the University of Arizona, Dr. Saracino offers Introduction to Pre-Columbian Art, Global Renaissance, and Pre-Columbian: Aztecs and Incas.