Executive Council Officers 2011-12
Roberto Márquez, President
A Puerto Rican born and raised in Spanish Harlem, translator, editor, essayist, and literary critic Roberto Márquez is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. An alumnus of the Bronx Community College “Operation Second Chance” Program, he received his B.A. from Brandeis University, in 1966, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Roberto Márquez, Mt. Holyoke College
The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship Award for study in Peru (1966), he has also received National Endowment for the Humanities (1978-79) and Tinker Foundation (1980-81) Postdoctoral Fellowships, and a Coordinating Council on Literary Magazines (CCLM) Editor’s Fellowship Award for his work as founder-editor of Caliban: A Journal of New World Thought and Writing. He is also the recipient (2002) of the Nicolás Guillén Centennial Commemorative Medal awarded in recognition of his “outstanding contributions to the dissemination and knowledge of Guillen’s work.” He has served on the Board of Advisory Editors of The American Quarterly, the Board of Directors of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), and on the Editorial Board of NACLA’s Report on The Americas. Mr. Marquez has, in addition, served on the International Jury for the Premio Casa de Las Americas (1977, 2009); as a member of the Editorial Board of The Massachusetts Review; and founding member and until recently on the International Advisory Board of the journal Latino Studies.
Mr. Márquez is the editor-translator of more than three volumes of the poetry of Nicolás Guillén, including Patria o Muerte: The Great Zoo and Other Poems, Man-Making Words: Selected Poems (with D.A. McMurray), and My Last Name. Editor of the bilingual anthology Latin American Revolutionary Poetry, he is also translator-editor most recently (2007) of Puerto Rican Poetry: An Anthology from Aboriginal to Contemporary Times. The first collection of its kind and broad historical scope yet available in English, it was awarded the New England Council of Latin American Studies (NECLAS) Prize for Translation (2008). His latest work A World among These Islands: Essays on Literature, Race, and National Identity in Antillean American, was published in the fall of 2010 by the University of Massachusetts Press.
Gladys Jiménez-Muñoz
Past-President
Gladys Jiménez-Muñoz, Binghamton University
Jiménez-Muñoz is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Binghamton University, State University of New York. She received her Ph.D. in U.S.Women’s History from Binghamton University in 1994. Jiménez-Muñoz is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow (1998-99). Her research and scholarly interests include: U. S. Women’s History; Latinas/os in the U.S.; Puerto Rican Women’s History; Feminist theories; Cultural studies and a critique of Coloniality.
Her work has appeared in The New Centennial Review, The Latino Review of Books, Bordes, Centro Journal, Border/Lines, and Education and Society. Selected book chapters include, among others, “Carmen Maria Colon Pellot: mujer y raza en Puerto Rico entre las dos guerras” in Contrapunteo de genero y raza en Puerto Rico, ed. Idsa Alegria Ortega & Palmira N. Rios Gonzalez, (Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, UPR, 2005); (with Kelvin Santiago-Valles), “Social Polarization and Colonized Labor: Puerto Ricans in the United States, 1945-2000,” in The Columbia History of Latinos in the United States, 1960-Present, ed. David Gutierrez (Columbia University Press, 2004); “Literacy, Class, and Sexuality in the Debate on Women’s Suffrage in Puerto Rico During the 1920s,” in Puerto Rican Women’s History, ed. Félix V. Matos and Linda Delgado (M.E. Sharpe, 1998); and “‘So We Decided to Come and Ask You Ourselves’: The 1928 U.S. Congressional Hearing on Women’s Suffrage in Puerto Rico,” in Puerto Rican Jam: Essays on Culture and Politics, ed. Frances Negrón and Ramon Grosfoguel (University of Minnesota Press, 1997); She has also done editorial reviews for Gender & Society and other journals. She is member of the editorial board of several journals: Wagadu: Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies; Proud Flesh: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousnes; and Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Scholarship Theory and Aesthetics.
Jiménez-Muñoz’s extensive service to the Puerto Rican Studies Association (PRSA) includes Treasurer (2001-2002 and 2003-2004); Program Chair for the 7th Biennial Conference, Cornell University (2006); Vice-President/President Elect (2007-2008); President (2009-2010); and now Past-President (2011-2012).
Charles R. Venator-Santiago, Vice-President/President-Elect
Charles R. Venator-Santiago - University of Connecticut
Venator-Santiago is presently an Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut where he holds a joint appointment in the Institute for Puerto Rican and Latino Studies and the Department of Political Science, as well as an affiliate position in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS). He teaches courses in Latino Politics, Political Theory, and Law & Society. He is also an affiliate faculty member of the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO)–Republica Dominicana. He received an M.A. with a concentration in International Relations and Political Theory and a Ph.D. in Political Science with a concentration in Legal History and Political Theory from The University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Venator-Santiago was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship (2004) in the Dominican Republic to conduct archival research on the legal history of the Haitian Unification period (1822-1844) and the institutional dimensions of the Dominican deportation/repatriation process. Most recently he was invited to join a USAID Environmental Law Capacity building project in Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Nicaragua (2009-present). He is also a consultant for the New Connections program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (2011).
He has also been actively involved in the Latino and Latina Critical Theory (LatCrit) Project, where he serves as a board member since 2001 and presently co-coordinates the South-North Exchange on Theory, Law and Culture. He has been working with PRSA in various capacities since 2006. In addition, he has been working on several projects with the Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission seeking to develop more egalitarian state legislation and public policies in the state of Connecticut for Latinos.
Venator-Santiago is presently working on three research threads in the areas of Western-Hemisphere legal history, Latinos and the law, and a translational project on U.S.-Dominican deportation law and policy. He is currently completing two book-length manuscripts titled “Less than Equal Citizenship: The Inclusive Exclusion of Puerto Ricans in the U.S. Global Empire” and “Puerto Rico and the U.S. Global Empire’s Foreign Policy.” In the area of Latinos and the law, he is presently completing a third book manuscript titled “The Daily Life of Latinos during the Civil Rights Era” (Greenwood Press). Some of his translational research on immigration will be forthcoming in the Harvard Latino Law Review (2011), which provides a comprehensive analysis of the Dominican deportation process.
Zaire Dinzey-Flores, Secretary
Zaire Dinzey-Flores, Rutgers University
Zaire Zenit Dinzey-Flores is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies and Sociology at Rutgers University, where she teaches courses on Caribbean societies, urbanism, race and ethnicity, and research methods. She was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vera Institute of Justice, New York, NY.
Dinzey-Flores has received an A.B. degree in Sociology from Harvard University (1995), an M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University, as well as a Masters in Urban Planning, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy & Sociology from The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She has been the recipient of a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, has been an U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Doctoral Dissertation Research Grantee, and received an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her research interests include urban design and policy, housing, social inequality, race, and crime and social control. Her work focuses on the social impact of urban design policies, and especially how the built environment shape race, class, and urban inequality in the context of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.
Her publications include “Temporary Housing, Permanent Communities: Public Housing Policy and Design in Puerto Rico,” in the Journal of Urban History; “From the Disco to the Projects: Urban Spatial Aesthetics and Policy to the Beat of Reggaeton” in Centro Journal; “Spatio Temporal Rhythms: The Ecology of Housing & Work in Elena Padilla,” in Latino Urban Ethnography and the Work of Elena Padilla, ed. Mérida Rúa (University of Illinois Press); and “Cache vs. Cas[h]eríos: Puerto Rican Neighborhoods under Siege,” in Caribbean Cities, ed. Rivke Jaffe (Ian Randle). She is currently completing a book manuscript tentatively titled “Locked In, Locked Out: The Gates of Race and Class in a Puerto Rican City.”
Luis Figueroa-Martínez, Treasurer & Website Editor
Luis Figueroa-Martínez is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, as well as affiliated faculty in Trinity’s International Studies Program and Film Studies program. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of History, Associate Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and co-founder of the Institute of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at The University of Connecticut. In 2005 he was Co-Winner of The Dean Arthur Hughes Award for Teaching Excellence, which Trinity College bestows on faculty with less than a decade of teaching at the college.
Luis Figueroa-Martínez, Trinity College
Born in Ponce, and raised in Coamo, Puerto Rico, Figueroa-Martínez received his B.A. in 1981 from Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras, and a Ph.D. in Latin American History in 1991 from The University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the recipient of graduate study fellowships from the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and the The University of Wisconsin-Madison; a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship; and a University of Connecticut’s Provost’s Research Fellowship. He is also the co-recipient of grants from the Rockefeller Foundation (Creativity and Culture Division), the Kellogg Foundation-Trinity College Community Innovation Fund, and the Connecticut Humanities Council.
Figueroa-Martínez is the author of Sugar, Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (co-published in 2005 by The University of North Carolina Press and Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico), recipient of an essay award in 2006 from the PEN Club Puerto Rico Chapter. His work in documentary film includes serving as script consultant for Connecticut Public Television’s film “Puerto Rican Passages” (1995, Frank Borres), which documented the history and contemporary realities of Connecticut’s Puerto Ricans; as associate producer of “Ritmo de Pueblo” (2001, Glenn Orkin), which focused on the role of music in Puerto Rican identity; as director, producer and editor of two documentary films on issues of racism, sexism and homophohia at Trinity College (“Umoja House,” 2003; and “Cinestudio Forum,” 2006); and as co-producer of a decade-long documentary film project, partly funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, that focused on the history of African-Americans and Puerto Ricans in Hartford the 1960s (Susan Pennybacker, executive producer). Figueroa-Martínez’s current research focuses on urbanism, suburbanization and colonial modernity in San Juan, Puerto Rico, since the 1930s.
