Fernando N. Santos

Fernando N. Santos was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and moved to the United States at the age of ten. He holds a BA in Spanish with a minor in Media Arts from Mercy University in New York and an MA in Spanish Literature from the University of Kansas. Santos attended the Instituto Hemingway in Bilbao, Spain—an institute accredited by Instituto Cervantes—where he completed Spanish language and literature courses. He has taught Spanish at the university level, including beginner, intermediate, and advanced courses. His areas of interest include digital humanities, multilingual digital humanities, sociolinguistics, and second-language acquisition.

Santos was selected as a Digital Humanities Fellow while pursuing his MA at the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas for the 2021–2022 academic year. His project, titled Trayectorias Digitales: La Jerga del Caribe, explores the dialectal zone of the Caribbean, which includes the island territories of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. The project emphasizes jerga (jargon) as a pedagogical linguistic approach to present the broader context and dynamics of the Caribbean.

Inspiration for his DH project

After immigrating from the Dominican Republic to the United States with my family in January 2009, I realized how essential it was to preserve our culture, even while far from our country of origin. One way I maintained my Dominican essence at home was by holding on to my “Dominican-ness” when expressing myself. Years later, I came to understand that this form of expression—often perceived as “incorrect,” “comical,” or “confusing” by many—was a type of language known as jerga (jargon). Jerga remains an essential tool for preserving the identity of the Dominican diaspora and, more broadly, my Caribbean essence.

In his free time, Santos enjoys traveling, discovering new cultures, exploring Latin American music, and visiting museums and historical sites. He also values creative storytelling and spending quality time with family and friends.