Karl Offen

• 2025 Fall
  • MAX 123 Critical Issues for the United States
  • GEO 324 Maps, Power, History
• 2025 Spring
  • GEO 300 Selected Topics - Political Ecology
• 2024 Fall
  • GEO 300 Selected Topics - Historical Geo-Latin America
• 2024 Spring
  • GEO 103 Environment and Society
  • GEO 300 Selected Topics - Latin American Historical Geo

Historical geography, political ecology, Latin America and the Caribbean, Atlantic world, map studies

• Books
  • In The Awakening Coast: An Anthology of Moravian Writings from Mosquitia and Eastern Nicaragua, 1849-1899. Offen, K. H., Rugeley, T. (eds.) University of Nebraska Press, 2014.
  • In Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader. Dym, J., Offen, K. H. (eds.) University of Chicago Press, 2011.
• Journal Articles
  • Offen, K. H., "Subsidio de la naturaleza: Las tortugas verdes en el gran caribe colonial." Mesoamerica, 2023.
  • Offen, K. H., "The lifeworld of Elizabeth Symons: Family biography and Atlantic geographies in the eighteenth century." Journal of Historical Geography, 2023.
  • Offen, K. H., "A Miskitu Critique of British Trade Practices." Ethnohistory, 2022.
  • Offen, K. H., "English Designs on Central America: Geographic Knowledge and Imaginative Geographies in the Seventeenth Century." Early American Studies, 2020.
  • Offen, K. H., "Subsidy from Nature: Green Sea Turtles in the Colonial Caribbean." Journal of Latin American Geography, 2020.
  • Offen, K. H., "Mapping Amerindian captivity in colonial Mosquitia." Journal of Latin American Geography, 2015.
  • Offen, K. H., "Historical Geography III: Climate Matters." Progress in Human Geography, 2014.
• Book Chapters
  • Offen, K. H., "Cartography and Environment in Colonial Latin American History." In Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Latin American History. Oxford University Press, 2024.
  • Offen, K. H., "Logwood, masterless men, and British interests in Yucatan and Central America." In Colours, Commodities and the Birth of Globalization: A History of the Natural Dyes of the Americas, 1500-2000. Bloomsbury, 2024.
  • Offen, K. H., "Environment, Space and Place: Cultural Geographies of Colonial Afro-Latin America." In Afro-Latin American Studies: An Introduction. Fuente, A. d., Andrews, G. R. (eds.) Cambridge University Press, 2018.
  • Offen, K. H., Rundstrom, R., "Indigenous Peoples and Western Cartography." In Cartography in the Twentieth Century, vol. 6: History of Cartography. Monmonier, M. (ed.) University of Chicago Press, 2015.
  • Offen, K. H., Dym, J., "Introduction." In Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader. Dym, J., Offen, K. H. (eds.) University of Chicago Press, 2011.
  • Offen, K. H., "Race and Place in Colonial Mosquitia." In Blacks and Blackness in Central America: Between Race and Place. Gudmundson, L., Wolfe, J. (eds.) Duke University Press, 2010.
  • Offen, K. H., "The Geographical Imagination, Resource Economies, and Nicaraguan Incorporation of the Mosquitia, 1838-1909." In Territories, Commodities and Knowledges: Latin American Environmental Histories in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Brannstrom, C. (ed.) Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2004.
• Book Review
  • Offen, K. H., "The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean: Waterscapes of Labor, Conservation, and Boundary Making." In H-Environment Roundtable. H-Environment Roundtable, 2023.
• Coordinator of book review forum who authored an introduction and edited the submission
  • "Introduction, book review forum, Palm Oil Diaspora: Afro-Brazilian Landscapes and Economies on Bahia's Dendê Coast." Offen, K. H. (ed.) Journal of Latin American Geography, 2023.
• Journal Special Issue Editor
  • "Mapping Latin American Geographies." Offen, K. H. (ed.) Journal of Latin American Geography, 2015.
• Online Libraries
  • Offen, K. H., "Introduction to and annotation of M.W.'s 'The Mosqueto Indian and his Golden River' of 1699." Revista Temas Nicaragüense, 2013.
  • Offen, K. H., "Isthmus Designs." In Cartographic Conversations, John Carter Brown Library. , 2012.
  • Offen, K. H., "La cartografía colonial de Centroamérica y el topónimo ‘Mosquito’." Boletín de la AFEHC (Asociación para el Fomento de los Estudios Históricos en Centroamérica), 2011.
  • Offen, K. H., "Mapping Land Politics on the Mosquito Shore." In I Found It at the JCB. , 2010.
• website
  • Offen, K., "Atlantic Bristol: Connecting the City to Central America and the western Caribbean." University of Bristol Library, Special Collections Blog, 2022.

Embodiment and the Human Experience: New Approaches to Biogeography and History, CNY Humanities Corridor Symposium, "“Where’s the beef? Cattle and Marronage in Caribbean Central America.”" (December 6, 2025)

Detour Ahead: What (still) inspires you in map and spatial history? , Skidmore College, "“Mapping Mosquitia: History, Cartography, and the Geographical Imagination in Caribbean Central America.”" (September 27, 2025)

37th Conference of Latin American Geographers, CLAG, "The Lifeworld of Elizabeth Symons: Family biography and Atlantic geographies in a multigenerational letter collection" (January 3, 2023 - January 6, 2023)

Offen, K. H., Lovejoy, P., Múltiples facetas de la Independencia: La emancipación de América Central en retrospective, Conmemoraciones por el bicentenario de la Independencia Centroamericana (1821-2021), "The Interesting Narrative of Intrigue and Deception on the Mosquito Shore, 1773-1781" (October 14, 2021 - October 16, 2021)

36th Conference of Latin American Geographers, "Subsidy from Nature: Green Sea Turtles in the Colonial Caribbean" (January 2, 2020 - January 4, 2020)

Professor, Department of Geography and the Environment, Syracuse University (2022-present)
Chair, Environmental Studies Program, Oberlin College (2019-2021)
Professor, Environmental Studies Program, Oberlin College (2017-2021)
Associate Professor, Environmental Studies Program, Oberlin College (2015-2017)
Associate Professor, Department of Geography, University of Oklahoma (2006-2015)
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of Oklahoma (2000-2006)