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Araby Smyth

Education
MA Geography, Hunter College of the City University of New York
Certificate in Geographic Information Science, Hunter College of the City University of New York
BA Political Science, Hunter College of the City University of New York
 
Research
My doctoral dissertation Gender and Remittances: Lived experiences of women in Oaxaca, Mexico explores the gendered processes of internal and international migration in one Mixe/Ayuuk village in the Isthmus region of the state of Oaxaca. More specifically, I looked at how remittances (money sent by migrants to their families in the village) are managed at the household and community scale. Remittances are the lens through which I analyzed global flows of capital in everyday life and struggles over how the productive and reproductive are valued.
 
My work is situated in feminist economic geography and speaks to interdisciplinary debates across critical development and finance studies, postcolonial studies, and Latin American feminist and Indigenous studies. Beyond the academy, my research has relevance for policy-making that is attuned to the significance of Indigenous knowledge systems and to the possibilities of women as economic and political actors.
 
 
My research, teaching, and service work in the university is all motivated by resistance and solidarity work. I am inspired by how people dream about putting our lives in common, how we face challenges together, find openings in unlikely places, and commandeer resources with determination to disrupt the settler-colonial, capitalist, patriarchal framework.
 
Teaching
Instructor:
GEO 309 Introduction to GIS
GEO 172 Human Geography
GEO 324 Geography of Central and South America and the Caribbean
GEO 323 Mexico Environment, Politics & Society
 
Teaching Assistant:
GEO 221 Immigrant America
GEO 109 Digital Mapping
 
Guest Lecturer:
Collaborative mapping
Feminist praxis
Hometown associations
Remittances
Refugees and asylum seekers
Student activism
Research methods