Jorge Quintana Navarrete Named New Directions Fellow

Dartmouth was awarded a 2025 New Directions Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation to support Jorge Quintana Navarrete, assistant professor of Spanish.

The prestigious grant supports humanities faculty in acquiring training outside their areas of expertise so they can cultivate the highest quality cross-disciplinary research.

Quintana Navarrete will examine how the foundations of modern geology intertwined with the history of colonialism in 19th-century Mexico, illuminating the interrelationship between geological science, political formations, and racialization.

"I will show how Mexican scientists, artists, and government officials mobilized geological concepts and premises to both optimize the extraction of mineral resources and undermine Indigenous ways of understanding the Earth," Quintana Navarrete says.

With funding from the Mellon Foundation, he will complete an online graduate course offered by the American Museum of Natural History and a graduate course with Harvard University's Department of the History of Science. He will also conduct an independent study and archival research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

"Formal training in geology and the history of science will equip me with a solid foundation to understand modern geological paradigms and their evolution since the 19th century," he says. "This, in turn, will provide me with analytical tools for studying the cultural, epistemological, and political implications of geological concepts and techniques of representation."

Following his fellowship, Quintana Navarrete plans to develop a class at Dartmouth that surveys the "geologic turn" in the humanities—an interdisciplinary research field that studies society's relationship with the planet during the Anthropocene era.

"This is a priceless opportunity for me to acquire new skills and develop scholarship that has both an academic and social impact," Quintana Navarrete says. "I'm extremely honored and grateful to receive this award."

This is the fourth time in the past decade that a Dartmouth faculty member has received the competitive fellowship. Most recently, religion professor Devin Singh received the grant in 2023 for his research on institutionalized trauma.

Quintana Navarrete worked closely with Dartmouth's Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations to develop his fellowship application.