Professor of Spanish

Year Joined RCNJ: 2007

Contact Information

• Phone: (201) 684-7426
• Email: nsantama@ramapo.edu
• Office: A-212
• Office Hours: MR 9:20-9:50 am, 1:00-2:00 pm

Education:

• B.A. Deusto University
• M.A. University of British Columbia
• A.M. Harvard University
• Ph.D. Harvard University

Courses Offered:

• Capstone Seminar: Rewriting Hispanic Identity Constructions
• Spanish for Health Care and Human Services Professionals
• Readings in the Humanities
• Topics in Contemporary Hispanic Literature and Film
• Spanish History, Art and Storytelling

Research & Teaching Interests:

• Spanish and Latin American fin-de-siècle Literature
• Teaching Spanish for Medicine and Human Services: Power Dynamics
• Regeneracionismo and discourses of illness

Scholarly Activity:

Books:

Alicia Muñoz Sánchez y Natalia Santamaría Laorden. Spanish for Health Care and Human Services: An Interdisciplinary Approach for Intermediate and Advanced Speakers. Cognella, 2022.

https://titles.cognella.com/spanish-for-health-care-and-human-services-9781793554529

Grants, Awards, & Recognition:

2023: Elected Chair of the Language for Specific Purposes Special Interest Group, American Council of Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL).

AAUSC 2020. Language Innovation Award: Finalist in the racial/ social justice category.

2018-2020. Project Investigator of the Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Federal Grant from the Department of Education (USA). “Enhancing the Certificate of Spanish for Health Care and Human Services Professionals”. Creation of Interdisciplinary Courses, Study Abroad Programs and Local Internships” ($154,794).

2020-2022. Project Investigator of the Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Federal Grant from the Department of Education (USA). “Improving cross-cultural communication between patients and human services professionals”. Creation of courses on narrative medicine in cross-cultural contexts, interpretation in human services courses and national and international internships with aphasia centers ($160,488).

2022: Henry Bischoff Excellence in Teaching Award

Journal and Book articles:

• “La incorporación de lenguas y humanidades en programas interdisciplinarios y bilingües”. [The integration of languages and humanities in interdisciplinary and bilingual programs]. Estudios del Observatorio/Observatory Studies, Journal of Observatorio Cervantes at Harvard University. 087-10. 2023, 41-56.
• “Indianos as the healthy alternative to lead the country in Spanish fin-de-siècle literature”. Reading Bodies: Narrating Illness in Spanish and European Literatures and Cultures (1870s to 1960s). Supported by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council (In progress) https://readingbodies.exeter.ac.uk/.
• Carney, Judith A. “El origen africano del cultivo del arroz en Las Américas”. Translated by Natalia Santamaría Laorden. Asclepio 67-1. (2015): http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2015.03.
• “A Regenerative Decadence or a Decadent Regeneration: Challenges to Darwininan Determinism by French, Spanish and Latin American Writers in the Fin de Siècle”. Decadence, Degeneration and the End. Palgrave MacMillan: New York, 2014.
• Review of Carmen Morán Rodríguez’s Figuras y figuraciones femeninas en la obra de Rosa Chacel Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies. 3 310-311. 2014
• “Modernismo y regeneracionismo como discursos permeables: Darío, Rodó y Unamuno”.  Decimonónica. 8.1. Winter 2011.
• “El papel de la ‘Aristocracia Intelectual’ en Joaquín Costa y José Enrique Rodó.”Letras Hispanas.   6 (2). Fall 2009.
• “Debates finiseculares entre autores españoles y latinoamericanos sobre el regeneracionismo español.” Cuadernos Americanos. 132. 2010/2. 159-179.

Recent Conferences

• “Incorporating Narrative Medicine in LSP courses focused on Health Care” with Anna Kozan (student). American Council of the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). November, 2023. Chicago.
• “The success of the Spanish for Health Care and Human Services Professionals Certificate at Ramapo College of New Jersey”. The Humanities at a Crossroads: How Interdisciplinary Programs Draw Undergraduates to the Humanities. National Humanities Alliance (NHA). October 2023. Indiannapolis.
• “El papel del español en la logopedia y los trastornos del habla y del lenguaje”. [The role of Spanish in speech therapy and speech disorders]. 2023 Instituto Cervantes Symposium. New Perspectives on Hispanic Cultures: Spanish in/for Science and Technology, June 2023. Harvard University.
• “El indiano en la literatura finisecular: Regeneracionismos transatlánticos, intrahistorias desintegradas y espejismos de riqueza instantánea [The indiano in fin-de-siècle literature: transatlantic regeneration, decomposed intrahistorias and a mirage of wealthiness”. Symposium of the Nineteenth-Century Hispanists Network. June, 2023. University College Dublin.
• “Innovative Study Abroad Program in Bilbao: Health Care and Human Services in the Basque Country” with Caitlin Ford (student). American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP). June 2023. University of Salamanca.
• “Spanish for Health Care and Human Services: Defying language acquisition and given concepts of culture”. 6th International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes. April 2022. University of Chicago.
• Teaching Spanish for Health Care and Human Services: Questioning Epistemologies and Power Dynamics. Fifth International Symposium. Languages for Specific Purposes (ISLSP)/CIBER Business Language Conference. 2020.
• Visiones transatlánticas regeneracionistas: Propuestas teóricas para la producción literaria española finisecular. American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. 2019.
• Las “ecuaciones ideales” de Rafael Altamira: Historiografía, jurisprudencia y positivismo.  Symposium of the Nineteenth-Century Hispanists. 2018.
• Recreación espacio-temporal de Nueva York en Diario de un poeta recién casado como búsqueda y deseo de un presente eterno. Brown University Transatlantic Project. 2017.