Caribbean Studies Initiative
"Dessalines Ripping the White from the Flag," 1995, by Madsen Mompremier (b. 1952, Gonaïves, Haiti). Fowler Museum at UCLA.
The Caribbean Studies Initiative provides a space to connect and showcase UT Austin's strong multidisciplinary cohort of faculty and grad students working on the Greater Caribbean and its diasporas. Including the multilingual coastal regions of Central America, multiregional Black Atlantic connectivity, the Gulf of Mexico Coast, Venezuela, the Caribbean coast of Colombia, and centers of large-scale Caribbean migration in Europe, the US, and Canada, the Greater Caribbean reflects the longstanding global and diverse orientations of the region.
Scroll down to view lists of UT Caribbeanist faculty and graduate students.
Image credit (bottom): "Looking South – Zaza," by Olivia Fern (Trinidad), used with permission.
Steering Committee
Mónica Jiménez
Assistant Professor, African and African Diaspora Studies
Interests: History of empire, law and race, 20th Century nationalist movements, racialization in the Caribbean, human rights in Latin American and the Caribbean, colonialism and neocolonial practices
Photo Credit.
Carlos Ramos-Scharrón
Associate Professor, LLILAS and Department of Geography & the Environment
Interests: Watershed sciences and applied hydrology and geomorphology of the Insular Caribbean and Latin America; human modification of landscapes; degradation of coral reefs; geomorphic impacts of tropical cyclones; environmental histories of colonial and post-colonial landscapes in the Caribbean
Photo Credit.
César A. Salgado
Associate Professor, Spanish & Portuguese; Chair of Graduate Studies, Program in Comparative Literature
Interests: Colonial and postcolonial New World baroque literatures; Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Latin American and comparative literature
Photo Credit.
- Caribbeanist Faculty
Eugenio Arima, Geography & the Environment | Interests: Puerto Rico; land systems, environmental policy analysis, spatial analysis, climate change impacts
Jossianna Arroyo-Martínez, Spanish & Portuguese | Interests: African Diaspora, blackness, gender, sexuality, queerness, racialization, media studies
Khytie K. Brown, Religious Studies | Interests: African diaspora religions, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, Caribbean religions
Simone Browne, African & African Diaspora Studies | Interests: Surveillance, more recently environment
Danielle Clealand, Mexican American & Latino Studies | Interests: Racial politics, Afro-Latino politics and identity
Brent Crosson, Religious Studies | Interests: Religion, secularism, climate change, race, science studies
Lina Del Castillo, History / LLILAS | Interests: Age of revolution, abolition/emancipation/slavery, print culture, visual culture, history of science
Lyndon K. Gill, African and African Diaspora Studies | Interests: Queer aesthetics in the African Diaspora, LGBT art and activism in Caribbean cultures, African-based spiritual traditions in the Americas
Mónica A. Jiménez, African & African Diaspora Studies | Interests: Race, law, empire, nationalism, revolution
Sheryl Luzzader-Beach, Geography & the Environment | Interests: Belize, Mexico; hydrology, geoarchaeology, geomorphology, water quality, agroecology
Robin Moore, Butler School of Music | Interests: Popular music, religious music, revolutionary cultural initiatives, Black traditions
Megan Raby, History | Interests: History of science, environmental history
Carlos Ramos-Scharrón, Geography & the Environment / LLILAS | Interests: Environment, climate change, hydormorphology, disasters
Ramón Rivera-Servera, College of Fine Arts | Interests: Puerto Rico, Latinx; contemporary performance, race, gender, sexuality, and (im)migration
César A. Salgado, Spanish & Portuguese | Interests: Cuban literature
Bjørn Sletto, Architecture (Planning) | Interests: Urban planning, community development
Cristina Soriano, History | Interests: Venezuela, Trinidad, early colonial history
Ashley Coleman Taylor, Religious Studies / Women's & Gender Studies | Interests: Black feminism, ethnography, gender and sexuality
Susan Thomas, Butler School of Music | Interests: Cuba, circum-Caribbean; Music, media, diaspora, gender, translation studies
Amy E. Thompson, Geography & the Environment | Interests: Belize; archaeology, inequality, neighborhoods, geospatial analysis, human-environment interactions
Jennifer Wilks, English / African & African Diaspora Studies | Interests: Gender, literary and cultural studies
- Caribbeanist Graduate Students
Ángela S. Pérez Aguilar, LLILAS | Interests: Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba; Community planning, participatory policymaking
Charlene Sales Bicalho, LLILAS | Interests: Black Atlantic, Black arts, relations of power, performance, creation process
Angel Blanco, Dance & Social Justice | Interests: Puerto Rico; Queer studies, performance, decolonization, intersectionality, and care
Chasitie Brown, Art & Art History | Interests: Race, gender, visual arts, affect/phenomenology, afterlives/hauntings of slavery
Mariana Escalona, LLILAS | Interests: Gender, race, laws of the colonial period
Jade Evans, Religious Studies | Interests: Race, religion, and discourse
Odalis García Gorra, American Studies | Interests: Digital studies, spirituality, culture, commercialism
Junika Hawker-Thompson, African & African Diaspora Studies | Interests: Guyana; Black geographies/ecologies, (digital) archives, anti-colonial studies, Black gender and sexuality studies
Nadia Milad Issa, Theatre & Dance | Interests: Cuba and Brazil; Spiritual reparations, cultural & environmental crises, sacred spaces & materialities, Regla de Ocha-Ifa and Candomblé
Cristina Isabel Maymí, Spanish & Portuguese | Interests: Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba; Phonology, linguistic attitudes & identity formation, dialectology, migration studies
Elizabeth Castillo Mena, Ethnomusicology | Interests: Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico; Afro-Caribbean, music, media, racial politics
Victoria Mogollón, Ethnomusicology | Interests: Religion, music
Sophia Monegro, African & African Diasporas Studies | Interests: Dominican Republic & Haiti; Black women's intellectual history, freedom seeking & abolitionist thought, Atlantic atudies, Dominican atudies, Black feminist theory
Keturah Nichols, Spanish & Portuguese | Interests: Afrolatinidades, race, gender, migration, mourning
Rafael David Nieto Bello, History | Interests: Caribbean coast of Colombia and Venezuela; Colonial history, the Conquest, history of knowledge, Inquisition, colonial ethnographies, race, environmental history, history of geography, digital humanities
Nelson Pagan-Butler, Spanish & Portuguese | Interests: Race and intellectual history
Chris Ploetz, Geography & the Environment | Interests: Belize; Archaeology, paleoenvironment, geographical information systems & Lidar, human-environment interaction, Maya civilization
Derrek Powell, Spanish & Portuguese | Interests: Puerto Rico; Sociolinguistics, ethnomusicology, media studies, popular music, reggaetón
Nicole D. Ramsey, Mexican American & Latina/o Studies; Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies | Interests: Belize/Central American Caribbean/Circum-Caribbean; Caribbean Diasporas in U.S.; Migration, nation, transnationalism, identity formation, popular culture
Jack DeVry Riordan, Spanish & Portuguese | Interests: Cuba; Cultural studies; film studies; immigration; digital humanities; independent cinema
Isaiah Frost Rivera, African & African Diaspora Studies | Interests: Brazil, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico; Afro-Diasporas, queerness, Black expressive cultures
Yenibel Ruiz Mirabal, Spanish & Portuguese | Interests: Colombia, Venezuela; Migration, borders, afrodescendents, Venezuelan migrants
Nicole Smythe-Johnson, Art & Art History | Interests: Emodernism, early 20th-C. circum-Caribbean migratory sphere, self-taught artists, cultural policy, "banana republics"
Clifton Sorrell III, History | Interests: Jamaica, maroonage, early colonial history
Lizannette Velasco, RTF, Film Production | Interests: Puerto Rico; Film, television, women in film and television
Piero Visconte, Spanish & Portuguese | Interests: Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, San Basilio de Palenque (Colombia); Afro-Hispanic varieties; pidgins & creoles; sociolinguistics; archival research; colonialism
Peyton E. White, Religious Studies | Interests: Rastafari, Pan-Africanism, Jamaica
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Learn more
Check the LLILAS Events page for upcoming public programs of interest, or sign up for the LLILAS Benson e-newsletter.
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