Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies

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.

• Foreword. Puerto Rican Studies in the Wake / Yarimar Bonilla ixIntroduction: Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies / Aurora Santiago Ortiz and Jorell A. MelÉndez-Badillo 1I. Puerto Rican Studies in Broader Fields of Knowledges1. Puerto Rican Studies as Caribbean, Latin American, and Diasporic Knowledges / Jorell A. MelÉndez-Badillo 192. How We Came to Know the Most Important Place in the World: Centering Puerto Rican Studies in American Studies / Marisol LebrÓn 343. Puerto Rican Studies as Latinx Studies / Marisel Moreno 45II. Queering Puerto Rican Studies4. Sustento and the Queer Feminist Politics of Awilda RodrÍguez Lora’s La Mujer Maravilla / Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes 635. “El aÑo que viene, viene peor”: AlegrÍa Rampante’s Queer Cartography of Puerto Rican Dystopia / Daniela Crespo-MirÓ 826. 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 103III. Centering Blackness7. “Nosotros hemos quedado marca’o con ese huracÁn”: Afro-Boricua Women Reflecting on Survival in the Wake of Hurricane MarÍa / Yomaira C. Figueroa-VÁsquez 1178. Afro-Puerto Rican Studies and Transgressing Epistemological Narratives: Facing and Surviving Anti-Black Racism in Puerto Rico / BÁrbara I. AbadÍa-Rexach 1369. A Festival in Black / Pedro LebrÓn Ortiz 153IV. Disaster Studies and Environmental Studies10. ¿TÚ EstÁs Preparado?: Anticipatory Emergency Governance in Puerto Rico / Sarah Molinari 16911. Making Decolonial Environmental Justice Futures in Puerto Rico / Gustavo GarcÍa LÓpez 18012. Vulnerable and Unruly Survival: Land Ontologies and Vieques, Puerto Rico / Marie Cruz Soto 209V. Prefigurative Politics and Social Movements13. Forging Puerto Rico’s Infrastructures of Resistance: Toward a Prefigurative Anti-Colonial Praxis in Puerto Rico / Aurora Santiago Ortiz 22514. Reverberations of Mutual Aid: Centros de Apoyo Mutuo and the January 2020 Earthquakes in Puerto Rico / Roberto VÉlez-VÉlez and Jacqueline Villarrubia-Mendoza 24515. Dimensions of Debility: Toward a Puerto Rican Debility Studies / Daniel NevÁrez AraÚjo and Daniel J. VÁzquez Sanabria 263VI. Legal and Political Disruptions16. We Are Done Emerging: Puerto Rico, Legal Scholarship, and the Problem of Invisibility / MÓnica A. JimÉnez 28117. Sovereignty Claims, Money Laundering, and Anti-Corruption in Puerto Rico / JosÉ Atiles and JoaquÍn Villanueva 29218. Decolonial Visions Across Oceanic Borderspaces: Puerto Rican Challenges to US Empire / Karrieann Soto Vega 308Epilogue. Pulse Check: On the Vitality of Puerto Rican Art / Marcela Guerrero 324Contributors 333Index

“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