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Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies

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Book

Pages: 370

Illustrations: 15 illustrations

Published: April 2026

Editors: Santiago Ortiz, Aurora, Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo

Contributors: Bárbara Abadía-Rexach, José Atiles, Yarimar Bonilla, daniela crespo-miró, Marie Cruz Soto, Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez, Gustavo García López, Marcela Guerrero, Mónica A. Jiménez, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Marisol LeBrón, Pedro Lebrón Ortiz, Beatriz Llenín-Figueroa, Sarah Molinari, Marisel Moreno, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, Karrieann Soto Vega, Daniel J. Vázquez Sanabria, Roberto Vélez-Vélez, Joaquín Villanueva, Jacqueline Villarrubia-Mendoza

Interrogating The Future of Puerto Rican Studies brings together emerging and established scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine the disciplinary and epistemic transformations that have given way to new understandings of the field of Puerto Rican studies. Documenting the intellectual contours that have shaped the field of Puerto Rican Studies in the last decade, a diverse range of contributors survey the field with new lenses that are attentive to gender, queerness, disability, and Blackness among other things. A foreword by Yarimar Bonilla situates the volume in the context of the field’s shift, specifically in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, while other sections, including “Queering Puerto Rican Studies,” “Centering Blackness,” and “Disaster Studies and Environmental Studies,” as well as “Puerto Rican Studies in Broader Fields of Knowledges,” “Prefigurative Politics and Social Movements,” and “Legal and Political Disruptions,” create a vibrant archive of conversations taking place within the field of Puerto Rican studies with the aim of interrogating its future.

Contributors. José Atiles, Bárbara Abadía Rexach, Yarimar Bonilla, daniela crespo-miró, Marie Cruz Soto, Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez, Marcela Guerrero, Gustavo García López, Mónica Jiménez, Lawrence LaFountain Stokes, Marisol LeBrón, Pedro Lebrón Ortiz, Beatriz Llenín Figueroa, Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, Sarah Molinari, Marisel Moreno, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, Aurora Santiago Ortiz, Karrieann Soto Vega, Daniel Vázquez Sanabria, Roberto Vélez-Vélez, Joaquín Villanueva, Jacqueline Villarrubia-Mendoza

Praise

“Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies is a work of both substantial scholarship and moral urgency. A multi-faceted examination of Puerto Ricans’ past and present, it is a call to challenge the silencing, a call that surfaces many questions. Students, journalists and activist networks will use it in thinking through the truths—and lies—about racial capitalism and imperial domination, as well as meanings of resistance and belonging.” - Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones, Emeritus Professor, Princeton University

“Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies marks a pivotal moment in the field, emerging amid deepening colonial crises in Puerto Rico and rising cultural pride. It centers Puerto Rico to examine U.S. empire, colonialism, and racial capitalism. This collection rightfully pushes Blackness and Queerness to the center of the field, and demands that Puerto Rican Studies be central to American and ethnic studies. Both timely and transformative, this collection is essential reading for understanding the evolving scope and stakes of the Puerto Rican Studies.” - Vanessa Díaz, author of Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Aurora Santiago Ortiz is Assistant Professor of Gender & Women Studies and Chicane/Latine Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo is Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the author, most recently, of Puerto Rico: A National History.

Table Of Contents

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Foreword. Puerto Rican Studies in the Wake / Yarimar Bonilla  ix
Introduction: Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies / Aurora Santiago Ortiz and Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo  1
I. Puerto Rican Studies in Broader Fields of Knowledges
1. Puerto Rican Studies as Caribbean, Latin American, and Diasporic Knowledges / Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo  19
2. How We Came to Know the Most Important Place in the World: Centering Puerto Rican Studies in American Studies / Marisol Lebrón  34
3. Puerto Rican Studies as Latinx Studies / Marisel Moreno  45
II. Queering Puerto Rican Studies
4. Sustento and the Queer Feminist Politics of Awilda Rodríguez Lora’s La Mujer Maravilla / Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes  63
5. “El año que viene, viene peor”: Alegría Rampante’s Queer Cartography of Puerto Rican Dystopia / Daniela Crespo-Miró  82
6. Queer Creation, Struggle, and Thought at the Coloquio ¿Del otro la’o? Perspectivas y debates sobre lo cuir (2006–present) / Beatriz Llenín Figueroa, Translated by Nicole Cecilia Delgado  103
III. Centering Blackness
7. “Nosotros hemos quedado marca’o con ese huracán”: Afro-Boricua Women Reflecting on Survival in the Wake of Hurricane María / Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez  117
8. Afro-Puerto Rican Studies and Transgressing Epistemological Narratives: Facing and Surviving Anti-Black Racism in Puerto Rico / Bárbara I. Abadía-Rexach  136
9. A Festival in Black / Pedro Lebrón Ortiz  153
IV. Disaster Studies and Environmental Studies
10. ¿Tú Estás Preparado?: Anticipatory Emergency Governance in Puerto Rico / Sarah Molinari  169
11. Making Decolonial Environmental Justice Futures in Puerto Rico / Gustavo García López  180
12. Vulnerable and Unruly Survival: Land Ontologies and Vieques, Puerto Rico / Marie Cruz Soto  209
V. Prefigurative Politics and Social Movements
13. Forging Puerto Rico’s Infrastructures of Resistance: Toward a Prefigurative Anti-Colonial Praxis in Puerto Rico / Aurora Santiago Ortiz  225
14. Reverberations of Mutual Aid: Centros de Apoyo Mutuo and the January 2020 Earthquakes in Puerto Rico / Roberto Vélez-Vélez and Jacqueline Villarrubia-Mendoza  245
15. Dimensions of Debility: Toward a Puerto Rican Debility Studies / Daniel Nevárez Araújo and Daniel J. Vázquez Sanabria  263
VI. Legal and Political Disruptions
16. We Are Done Emerging: Puerto Rico, Legal Scholarship, and the Problem of Invisibility / Mónica A. Jiménez  281
17. Sovereignty Claims, Money Laundering, and Anti-Corruption in Puerto Rico / José Atiles and Joaquín Villanueva  292
18. Decolonial Visions Across Oceanic Borderspaces: Puerto Rican Challenges to US Empire / Karrieann Soto Vega  308
Epilogue. Pulse Check: On the Vitality of Puerto Rican Art / Marcela Guerrero  324
Contributors  333
Index  343

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Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-3334-9 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-2989-2 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-6208-0 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478062080