Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann, Interim Director of El Instituto and Associate Professor, Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann (they or she pronouns) is a scholar of Caribbean and decolonial literature, history, and social theory and the author of Writing the Caribbean in Magazine Time (Rutgers University Press, 2021). Katerina’s essays on literary magazines, literary infrastructure, and Caribbean textual and intellectual circulation also appear in MLN, Small Axe, South Atlantic Quarterly, The Global South, The Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, and Inti. Katerina is also a member of the Aimé Césaire research group of the Francophone manuscripts team at the École normale supérieure in Paris and a translator of contemporary Cuban literature.
Anne Gebelein, Associate Director, Associate Professor in Residence, El Instituto
Anne Gebelein is the Associate Director of El Instituto and Associate Professor in Residence. She received her doctorate in Hispanic Literatures from Yale University's Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Anne teaches a wide variety of courses in Latino and Latin American Studies, with a focus on migration, human rights, and border studies. She is faculty Co-Chair of Service Learning for the university, the ECE coordinator for Latin American Studies, and she directs community outreach efforts for El Instituto.
Emma Amador, Assistant Professor, History
Emma Amador is an Assistant Professor of History and Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies. Her work focuses on Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans, and U.S. Latina/o/x History with an emphasis on women, gender, and race. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and held a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brown University. Her first book, The Politics of Care: Puerto Ricans, Citizenship, and Migration after 1917, is under contract with Duke University Press. She has published articles in LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History, ILWCH: International Labor and Working-Class History, and Modern American History.
Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, Professor of History and Director, Hartford Campus
The graduate and undergraduate courses I teach examine the historical origins of the broad, transnational and interdisciplinary fields of Latin(o) American history, with special emphasis on the history of Greater Mexico (including the Mexico/US border and the Mexican diaspora). Topics analyzed in my courses include economic and political imperialism, human rights, migration, cultural nationalism, political membership, gender relations, race and racism, identity formation, religion, labor, immigration law, and the arts.
Diana Rios, Associate Professor, Communication
Professor Rios served as director of the Institute for Puerto Rican and Latino Studies (IPRLS) from March 2009 to December 2010 and was associate director of IPRLS during 1997-2003. She is the author of many publications and papers examining mass media processes, audience and content, and aspects of ethnicity, race, culture and gender.
Charles R. Venator Santiago, Associate Professor, Political Science
Charles R. Venator Santiago completed an M.A. in Political Science with a concentration in International Relations and a Ph.D. in Political Theory and Public Law. He teaches courses in Latino/a politics, Latino/as and the law, LatCrit, immigration, Puerto Rican politics, political theory and public law.
Rodolfo Fernandez, Assistant Professor in Residence, Historian
Rodolfo Fernández is an historian of Latin America specializing in modern Mexico. He received his Ph.D. from Georgetown University and has taught at Georgetown, Brandeis, Tufts, Boston University, and Boston College. His research focuses on the intersection of industrialization, urbanization, and revolution in Mexico. He joined the Instituto in 2018 and teaches Latin American history surveys as well as more focused classes on topics such as colonial history and modern Mexico.
Bethsaida Nieves, Visiting Assistant Professor, El Instituto
Bethsaida Nieves received her Ph.D. in Curriculum Theory and Research with a Ph.D. minor in the History of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She studies how constructions of difference are transmogrified into scientific facts and mobilized as mainstream ideologies. In her scholarship, she draws on the historical, scientific, philosophical, and legal construction of difference to analyze the systems of reason(ing) and intersectionalities that produce knowledge, power, and difference in education and society. She has taught undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral level courses in education theory, education methods, multicultural research ethics, and philosophy. She has also overseen thesis projects in education and health care. Her forthcoming publications examine historical and contemporary issues of education, public health, governmentality, eugenics, and biopolitics in Puerto Rico.