Natalie Hartman retires after guiding CLACS through 35 years of change

It’s not uncommon in academia for small academic centers and initiatives to be moved around the university, vacating offices needed for others, moving into new spaces created for them, expanding, contracting. The same is true for the Duke University Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), which for the last 35 years has dwelled in attics, a basement, a Campus Drive house, and, currently, in the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies.

But in all those 35 years, it has only had one program director, Natalie Hartman. In June 2025, Natalie will retire from CLACS, leaving it one of the most prominent centers for the study of and research on Latin America and the Caribbean on the East Coast.

As associate director, Natalie has provided funding and support for hundreds of graduate students studying the region and watched them go on to successful careers as faculty at other universities, among other important career paths.

With the center’s future role at Duke uncertain, CLACS owes its past stability and success in large part to Natalie and her generous, collaborative style, building a program that has succeeded in times both prosperous and lean.

Natalie was initially recruited for the job of program coordinator for the Duke-UNC Consortium in Latin American Studies in 1990 by Professors Gary Gereffi, William Ascher, John TePaske, Ariel Dorfman, Librarian Deborah Jakubs, and International Studies Coordinator Josefina Tiryakian at Duke, together with Professor Lars Schoultz and Program Coordinator Sharon Mújica at UNC-Chapel Hill.

She was working for the Tinker Foundation in New York City overseeing Tinker Field Research Grants and had a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from Tulane University.

During her first visit, she said the faculty and staff were so welcoming to her, that “it was like coming to visit friends.”

Natalie’s experience with grants was to prove invaluable for obtaining institutional endowments from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for Duke and the Consortium and National Resource Center grants from Title VI of the Higher Education Act from the U.S. Department of Education for the Consortium.

Her first office at Duke was in the attic of the house on Campus Drive occupied by the Center for International Studies (dissolved in 2022), where she recalls having to share a computer with future CIS program director Rob Sikorski to work on her first Title VI grant.

Getting that grant meant that she could hire another staff assistant and Latin American Studies could add an undergraduate certificate to the graduate certificate program focused on Latin America and the Caribbean. The Consortium could expand outreach activities and support for less-commonly-taught language education.

Natalie recalled her next move was to a space in the top of the Allen Building, shared with English department faculty and Provost Office staff.

 “I had one student assistant, who literally had to sit on the floor to work,” she laughed.

After a year there, she was asked to move to the basement of Old Chemistry into a former construction storage space needing asbestos abatement. “When I first saw it, there were shovels and a dead frog,” Natalie said.

There were also dangling wires, pipes, and no windows, so when they received Mellon Foundation or Title VI site visits, she would organize the meetings somewhere else on campus, “just in case they asked to borrow the phone.”

One day, faculty director Bill Ascher said to her, “What would you think of us getting a house on campus?”

“Yeah, right,” she recalled saying. “Like they were going to give us a house!”

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Happily, the rumors were true, and the two staff members moved into 2114 Campus Drive, where the Graduate Liberal Studies now resides. From 1993 to 2007 what was formerly the Duke Council on Latin American Studies grew into the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. They had offices for visiting professors and grad students, parking, and, best of all, a large conference room.

Natalie said years of scrabbling to find space for meetings and events meant that she knew the value of that space, and she intended to be generous with it.

The planning committee for the current Doris Duke Center at Sarah P. Duke Gardens used the conference room to hold their meetings and were so grateful for the space that they offered Natalie use of the building for free in 2001 when CLACS celebrated getting the Mellon endowment that funded the Mellon Visiting Professorship that would bring prominent academics from all over Latin America and the Caribbean to teach for a semester at Duke.

“Lots of fun and important things began for CLACS and the Consortium in that house,” Natalie said. “We had great activities and great parties in there. We hosted lots of visiting scholars and our first Mellon visiting professors, and our interdisciplinary working groups met there regularly.”

The now UNC-Duke Consortium was thriving, particularly through outreach activities coordinated by Sharon Mujica, including the North Carolina Latin American Film Festival, workshops to train K-12 teachers, a summer Yucatec Maya language program, and support for other less-commonly-taught languages which today include Portuguese, Haitian Creole, K’iche Maya, Guaraní, and Quechua. All of this increased the Consortium's visibility and national recognition.

Natalie remembered it was environmental sciences and policy professor Bob Healy who came by the CLACS house one day and thought the space could use some Latin American art. She loved the art of the Americas herself and began asking graduate students to bring back indigenous and local art on their research travels. The collection of figurines, textiles, paintings, prints, and objects d’art continues to decorate CLACS walls and offices. [See accompanying video]

It was the heyday of Duke’s focus on international studies during this time, with eight centers having Title VI NRC grants: DUCIS, Canadian Studies, European Studies, the North Carolina Consortium for Middle East Studies (CMES), South Asia Studies, the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies (CSEEES), the Asian-Pacific Studies Institute (APSI), and CLACS.

The John Hope Franklin Center opened in 2000, a symbol of Duke’s commitment to an international and interdisciplinary focus. CLACS was finally persuaded to leave its house in 2007 and move to the first floor of the Franklin Center.

“Even though we were sad to lose the house on Campus Drive, in the end the move to the Franklin Center and becoming part of its community was very beneficial and allowed us to collaborate with other area studies centers and units in the building,” Natalie said.  

Applying for the federal Title VI grants was no easy task, and Natalie said she thought the collaboration between the area centers helped when it came time to interpret the guidelines and share the task of data collection.

“I think it did help to strengthen proposals, partly by mentoring each other and brainstorming with each other on how to present our information,” she said.

It is the one aspect of her job that she won’t miss, after going through 10 cycles of applications.

Natalie has always credited the teamwork between Duke CLACS and UNC’s Institute for the Study of the Americas and her partnership with her counterpart Beatriz Riefkohl-Muñiz, for the success of the Title VI grant proposals.

This federal proposal process is a year’s worth of labor.

“I have felt so sorry for myself,” she joked. “It’s like writing 10 dissertations!”

Professor Dennis Clements, a former faculty director of CLACS and co-director of the Consortium, said when he first accepted the job he was worried about the time and effort devoted to Title VI applications.

“I soon realized that I had nothing to worry about – Natalie had it all under control,” Dr. Clements said. “When the Title VI grant was up for renewal I was concerned whether I would have enough time to participate as required. Once again – no worries. While Natalie would ask for my opinion, she would then do all the heavy lifting and get the grant in order … For 20 years Natalie took care of everything in the most complete, efficient and seamless manner while I simply sat back and marveled at her dedication and competence.”

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Duke University’s Office of the President recognized that dedication when it awarded Natalie the Presidential Award, Duke’s highest honor, in 2024.

While CLACS and the Consortium celebrated getting a perfect score from the Dept. of Education on its latest proposal, other international area centers at Duke have not lasted so long. Only CMES, CSEEES, APSI, and CLACS remain, but only CMES and the CLACS/Consortium are still Title VI National Resource Centers.

While Natalie is very proud of the many projects CLACS has showcased during her time at Duke – the Latin American Presidents Series, the Latin America in Translation Series, the Duke Brazil Initiative, the Latin American Labor History Conference, the Latin American Film Festival, and the recent Linguistic Justice in the Americas Series, to name a few – the part of her job she cherished the most was working with the graduate students who passed through Duke on their way to successful careers.

“I’m going to miss having the experience of working with the graduate students, getting to know them and their work, advising them, especially on their research applications to agencies like Fulbright, Fulbright-Hays, NSF, and others, and supporting them though the grant competitions I administer,” she said.

She still sees their faces on the many photographs she keeps in her office and on her refrigerator at home.

“Seeing our grad students grow and advance in their careers, many who are now senior faculty who are sending their students to our program is very special to me,” Natalie said.

Natalie Gasparowicz, who received her Ph.D. at Duke in 2024 said, “Natalie Hartman always had the answer to so many of my questions as a graduate student at Duke. I still remember how she read a draft of my Fulbright-Hays application and she gave me such thoughtful feedback. This is just one example of MANY. She always had our back.”

Current CLACS faculty director Liliana Paredes said she is incredibly grateful for the two years she has worked with Natalie.

“Throughout our time together, Natalie was a generous thought partner,” Paredes said. “She was always ready to listen, brainstorm, and help find solutions to both the big questions and the small, everyday challenges. As the second year brought unexpected difficulties, her steady leadership, kindness, and deep commitment to the CLACS community never wavered. I am deeply thankful for her trust, support, and example of leadership grounded in wisdom and care. It has truly been a privilege to work alongside her, and her impact on CLACS will continue to be felt; even as the center moves through a period of change.”

History Professor John French, who was a CLACS faculty director and co-director of the Consortium during the early 2000s agreed.

“It is possible to disagree with Natalie, who most likely will prove to be right, but there is never any question that she values the mission to a far greater degree than anyone else. She wants things to be done promptly, properly, and with a certain elegance,” French said.

Natalie has received many similar messages of gratitude since she announced her retirement, but she is always quick to return credit to her staff, the faculty, and the community at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill.

“I have always felt very supported by everyone in our Latin American studies community,” Natalie said. “I have always enjoyed working with all the faculty, all the grad students, and I have always felt that we had a great community, very collegial, with people who worked hard together to build the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program, and I have felt very fortunate for that because I haven’t always seen that kind of collegiality in other places. I’ve made many friends who mean a lot to me. It’s very special.”

Article by Jennifer Prather with video content by Miguel Rojas-Sotelo