Thank you for visiting my teaching and research portfolio! My name is Daniel Santiago Sáenz and I am a historian of early modern European and Latin American visual cultures. Originally from Medellín, Colombia, I settled in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal before relocating to Lenapehoking/NYC for graduate school.
I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Latin American & Iberian Cultures and the Institute for Comparative Literature & Society at Columbia University in the City of New York. My research examines the visualization of Franciscan pedagogical projects in the early modern transatlantic world, with particular emphasis on New Spain (colonial México) and Diego Valadés’s Rhetorica christiana (1579). I hold an M.Phil and M.A. from Columbia University, as well as an M.A. in Art History and a B.A. in Religion from Concordia University (Montréal, Canada). My research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture, and the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte. I am currently finishing my dissertation as a predoctoral fellow in the Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions Research Group at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome.
As an Instructor of Record at Columbia University, I have taught a number of language and culture courses in my home department, including SPAN3300: Advanced Language Through Content and SPAN3349: Hispanic Cultures I: Antiquity Through the Colonial Period. These courses, taught in Spanish, introduce students to key aspects of Spanish and Latin American artistic and intellectual production. In 2023, I was appointed as a Preceptor in the Centre for the Core Curriculum through a competitive selection process, giving me the opportunity to teach a year-long course called Literature Humanities that introduces students to the study of literary texts through sustained engagements with significant and challenging books, starting with Homer’s Iliad and culminating with Claudia Rankine’s Citizen.
In 2024, my former and current students, peers, and Columbia University recognized my dedication to teaching Spanish language, Hispanic cultural studies, and literary studies with the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, the University’s highest recognition of pedagogical excellence and innovative teaching.
In addition to my teaching at Columbia, I have taught at my alma mater, Concordia University. One is a thematic survey of artistic production in Colonial Latin America, with particular emphasis on New Spain, transatlantic exchange, and issues of colonization. This course introduced students with little to no background in early modern or Latin American art history to art-making practices before and after the conquest until the eighteenth century. The second was an Introduction to Renaissance Art and Architecture, which I taught as a Global Art History course along the axes of image-making and empire-building using Smarthistory‘s Reframing Art History textbook.
I have also had the pleasure of mentoring undergraduate students from groups historically underrepresented in academia through the Connect Concordia Mentorship Program and Columbia University’s GSAS–Leadership Alliance Summer Research Program.
You can read more about what drives my teaching here, peruse evidence of efficient practices here, and learn more about my commitment to inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility in academia here. I have also made sample syllabi and teaching materials available.
You can contact me by email at daniel.saenz@columbia.edu