Santa Arias Ph.D. Wisconsin-Madison) is Professor and Head in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Her current teaching and research highlight the critical importance of space, place, and nature in cultural products produced under colonialism. She deploys a transoceanic perspective to study early modern Iberian colonial-imperial engagements XV-XIX) focusing on historiography, geographical discourses, and visual representation. Her transdisciplinary critical approach and heavy reliance on archival research distinguish her training of students and her contributions to the advancement of scholarshiin colonial studies. She has published numerous essays in academic journals and edited volumes. Her books include Retórica, historia y polémica: Bartolomé de las Casas y la tradición intelectual renacentista 2001) and five co-edited volumes: Mapping Colonial Spanish America: Places and Commonplaces of Identity, Culture, and Experience 2002) Approaches to Teaching the Writings of Bartolomé de las Casas 2008) The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives 2008) and Coloniality, Religion, and the Law in the Early Iberian World 2013) and The Routledge Companion to Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean 1492-1898) 2020) Her second monograph in final stages) The Nature of Empire: Geo/graphing the Tropics during the Enlightenment, explores the centrality of geographical thinking in late colonial discourses on the tropical Americas. For this book project, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowshiand a CIES/Fulbright Fellowshito Colombia. Also, she has begun work in the book project Entanglements from San Juan: The Imperial-Colonial Paradox of Enlightenment at a Caribbean Frontier. This project examines geographical thinking for economic development for Puerto Rico and the Caribbean under Bourbon rule. Her focus is on the Benedictine Friar Agustín Iñigo Abbad y Lasierra Historia geográfica, civil y natural 1788] who provided detailed observations on geography, climate, and natural phenomena in a historical account that also served as a critique of Spain’s colonialism.