Contemporary Dominican Gender and Sexualities Studies

This special section traces predominant critical concerns in Dominican gender and sexuality studies in the United States. It proposes a triangulated lens for the study of gender and sexuality, focusing not only on Dominican-Haitian cross-border and Spanish colonialism but also on the role of US influence--similar to how questions of race and Dominican-Haitian relations have recently been approached by scholars. Essays included in this section foreground Dominican resistance to US imperialism and its gendering and racializing of the population; Dominican women as political actors and not merely passive bystanders or martyrs during authoritarianism; the setbacks represented by the new Dominican constitution of 2010, especially for women's reproductive rights; the growing visibility and presence of LGBT organizations and representations in the twenty-first century; and understudied women cultural producers of the Dominican diaspora.