Join us on Sunday, April 16 at 6pm for “The Survival of a People: A conversation about the living memory of the Hoboken fires.” It’s the sixth and final in our series of special Exhibit Events tied to our Main Gallery exhibit. We are also livestreaming. Ask questions!  Watch here on YouTube, and watch here on Facebook. 

We are thrilled to welcome scholar Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez, Ph.D. who will be speaking with exhibit creator and award winning photographer Christopher López. Yomaira grew up in Hoboken, consulted on the exhibit, and wrote its introduction, which is posted on the wall near the stairs to our Upper Gallery. 

A native of Puerto Rico, Yomaira was born and raised in Hoboken, NJ and is a first-generation high school and college graduate. She is Associate Professor of Global Afro-Diaspora Studies in the department of English at Michigan State University. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and her B.A. in English, Puerto Rican and Hispanic Caribbean Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick (Douglass College).

She is the author of the award-winning monograph, Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literature (Northwestern University Press, 2020) which examines the textual, historical, and political relations between diasporic Afro-Puerto Rican, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Dominican, and Equatoguinean literary poetics. Her current book project, The Survival of a People (under contract with Duke University Press), examines the disappearances and excesses of Afro-Puerto Rican island and diasporic peoples through the study of familial stories, archival histories, photography, visual art, and film from the late 19th century to the present. Her published work can be found in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, the Journal of Decolonization, CENTRO Journal, Small Axe, Frontiers Journal, SX Salon, Hispanofilia, Contemporânea, Post-45 Contemporaries, Ethnic Studies Rise, and Black Latinas Know.

A scholar and organizer, she is a founder of the MSU Womxn of Color Initiative, collaborative study-away project #ProyectoPalabrasPR, and the digital/material site Taller Electric Marronage, and directs the experimental art and pedagogy project the Afro-Latinx Lab. Dr. Figueroa was awarded the 2015-2017 Duke University SITPA Fellowship, the 2017-2018 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, the 2017-2018 Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship, and the 2021-2022 Cornell University Society for the Humanities Fellowship. She is the PI and co-organizer for the Andrew W. Mellon funded “Diaspora Solidarities Lab,” a $2M Higher Learning project focused on Black feminist digital humanities initiatives that support solidarity work in Black and Ethnic Studies.

She has has served on forum and section leadership roles for the Modern Languages Association (MLA), the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), the American Studies Association (ASA), and is the Vice President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA). Dr. Figueroa is passionate about mentoring underrepresented and first-generation students and co-leads the MSU Mentoring Underrepresented Scholars in English Program (MUSE) which seeks to advise and recruit promising prospective Ph.D. students in an effort to shift the discipline and study of English. Dr. Figueroa teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the department of English and the Chicano/Latino Studies Program and is core faculty in the African Studies Center and the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies.