Department of Spanish and Portuguese

María is the Supervisor of S250. She has over ten years of experience teaching at every curricular level, including courses such as general education, basic language, literature, advanced grammar, and Spanish for heritage students, and in different formats such as in person, online, and study abroad. She uses a communicative approach in her classes and aims to create an atmosphere where students can express their ideas in an egalitarian environment.

Her doctoral studies in the Humanities and postdoctoral training in Public Health trained her to use a health and humanities lens to approach Racial and Ethnicity studies. Accordingly, her research examines race and ethnicity in contemporary socio-cultural contexts, emphasizing health-related issues among Latinx people. Further, María's research focuses on the improvement of healthcare access and equality within underrepresented groups through language.

Recent Publications 

• Montenegro, Valdez, Solon, Jozkowski, Crawford, Turner, and Lo, (2022). “Abortion Legality and Morality: Examining the Influence of Religiosity on Abortion Attitudes Among a Sample of US Latinxs.” Journal of Religion and Society. Vol. 24, pp.1-22
• Valdez, Jozkowski, Montenegro, Haus, Crawford, Turner, Lo, and Bollen, (in press). “Assessing rigid modes of thinking in self-declared abortion ideology: Natural Language Processing insights from an online pilot qualitative study on abortion attitudes.” Pilot and Feasibility Studies. 
• Montenegro, Valdez, Crawford, Turner, Jozkowski, and Lo, (in press). “Using a decentering framework to create English/Spanish surveys about abortion: Insights into comparative survey research (CSR) for new survey development.” The Social Science Journal. 
• Valdez, Jozkowski, Montenegro, Jackson, Crawford, Turner, and Lo, (in press) “Identifying Accurate Pro-Choice and Pro-Life Identity Labels in Spanish: Social Media Insights and Implications for Comparative Survey Research.” Perspectives on Sexual Reproductive Health. 
• Montenegro, Maier, Jozkowski, Crawford, Turner, and Lo, (2021). “A Preliminary Qualitative Study Examining the Influence of Religion on US-Based Latinx Abortion Attitudes.” Qualpor Newsletter. pp.5-7.   
• Valdez, Montenegro, Crawford, Turner, Jozkowski, and Lo, (2021) “Translation frameworks as a component of methodological decision making in health science: A discussion and taxonomy of popular translation frameworks and their uses.” Social Science and Medicine. Vol. 278, pp. 1-7.  
• Maier, Jozkowski, Montenegro, Crawford, Turner, and Lo, (2021). “Examining Auxiliary Verbs in a Salient Belief Elicitation.” Health Behavior and Policy Review. Vol 8, no 4, pp, 347-393. 
• Montenegro, (2019). “Petro-Affect: Towards a Reading of Oil’s Ubiquity in Pelo Malo by Mariana Rondón.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. Vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 991-1011.  
• Montenegro, (2019).  Review of Letras sobre un dios mineral: el petróleo mexicano en la narrativa by Edith Negrín. Revista Iberoamericana. vol.85, no.268, pp. 1101-1104.