I am an Assistant Professor of Spanish and Affiliate Faculty in the U.S. Latino/a Studies Program here at Iowa State. In regards to my current research, I identify broadly as a caribeñista and digital humanist. In 2019, I published Mapping Hispaniola: Third Space in Dominican and Haitian Literature with the University of Virginia Press. Mapping Hispaniola considers the ways Dominicans, Haitians and their US diasporas have imagined the physical and metaphorical border(s) that divide the island of Hispaniola. Currently, I am working on co-editing an anthology titled The Border of Lights Reader: Bearing Witness to Genocide in the Dominican Republic. I have recently published on Caribbean and Latinx literature in journals including Hispania, Chiricú, Confluencia, and Caribe. Further, I am interested and have an active research agenda in the field of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and was a 2018-2019 Iowa Campus Compact Engaged Research Fellow. My research informs my teaching and in the classroom at Iowa State I have taught everything from a senior seminar on contemporary Caribbean Literature to Spanish for Business and Textual and Media Analyses. I also teach in the U.S. Latino/a Studies Program; I routinely teach the Introduction to Latinx Studies course (USLS 211) as well a new course titled “Latinas/os and the Iowa Immigration Experience” that has a required community engagement component. Last but not least, I am the co-director of an LAS Global Seminar titled “Education and Environmental Sustainability in the Dominican Republic: Learning Through Community Engagement” and co-founder of Border of Lights.