Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies Pt. 2: Resistance and Multimodal Avenues for Activism and Self-Determination

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Roundtable Format

Abstract

This roundtable brings together interdisciplinary perspectives on the struggles for self-determination and autonomy in Puerto Rico, exploring the themes of decoloniality, feminist and queer politics, performance, and community survival. By examining the complex relationships between body, land, and power through the lens of Puerto Rican Studies, the presenters shed light on ongoing battles against colonialism, neoliberalism, and gendered violence. We frame these struggles not only in terms of political sovereignty but by re-imagining identity and decolonial sociabilities as tools for survival and collective memory recuperation. We highlight the vital connections between queer/feminist aesthetics and activism, disability, and anti-colonial thought, providing insights into the ways Puerto Ricans continue to resist and envision alternative futures in the face of systemic violence and dehumanization.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Chair

• Marisol Lebron, University of California-Santa Cruz

Panelists

• Aurora Santiago Ortiz, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Daniel Nevárez Araújo, University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras

• Marie Cruz Soto, New York University

• Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Biographical Information

Daniel Nevárez Araújo
Daniel Nevárez Araújo is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Puerto Rico - Río Piedras. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst. He has published work in a wide array of topics, including Disability Studies, AIDS/HIV literature and film, comedy, documentary film, immigration, identity, and heavy metal music in publications such as Hispanic Issues, The Journal of Fandom Studies, The Massachusetts Review, Trespassing Journal, Sargasso, and Metal Music Studies. He has co-edited the books Heavy Metal in Argentina: In Black We Are Seen (2020), Heavy Metal in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South (2021), Defiant Sounds: Heavy Metal Music in the Global South (2023), and The Bad Bunny Enigma: Culture, Resistance, and Uncertainty (2025). He co-authored the book Seeing Metal Music in Latin America and the Caribbean (2024). He has also co-edited various Special Issues for the Metal Music Studies journal, published by Intellect Books. In addition to his academic work, Nevárez Araújo has also worked as a translator. In his free time, he enjoys Brazilian jiu jitsu, hiking, cooking, and the unpredictable adventures of entertaining his daughter.

Marie Cruz Soto
Marie Cruz Soto (B.A. in History of the Americas from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, and Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) is broadly interested in the workings of modern imperialism/colonialism, and in those struggles to un-do and to un-become upon which survival sometimes hinges (i.e., in the imagining of a different world). She is particularly interested in the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, and in how imperialism/colonialism has shaped the makings of the Viequense community. Her work explores how the long history of violent displacements and dispossessions in the island has ensured a vulnerable and unruly population—unruliness that forced the U.S. Navy out of the island and that has inspired people across the world similarly dreaming of a more peaceful and loving future.

Cruz Soto is also an active member of the Viequense community who has participated in different organizations and in transnational networks of solidarity against U.S. military bases. As part of this work, she has given public lectures and attended hearings—participating twice as a petitioner in the United Nations Decolonization Hearings on Puerto Rico. Currently, she is part of the Archivo Histórico de Vieques and La Colmena Cimarrona. These Vieques-based organizations are devoted to the preservation of the history of the Viequense community and to the achievement of food sovereignty and agroecology in Vieques. Cruz Soto also participates in a Collective working towards housing justice and land access for Viequenses in Vieques.

She teaches at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University. Her courses delve into feminist and decolonial epistemologies, into the workings of the U.S. Empire and Settler Colonial State, into struggles to narrate the past and claim places, into the enactment of radical sovereignties, and into the formation of communities and the edification and transgression of boundaries.

Lawrence LaFountain-Stokes
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is Professor of American Culture, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is author of Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (University of Minnesota Press, 2009), Escenas transcaribeñas: ensayos sobre teatro, performance y cultura (Isla Negra Editores, 2018), and Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2021), and coeditor of Keywords for Latina/o Studies (New York University Press, 2017). His books of fiction include Uñas pintadas de azul/Blue Fingernails and Abolición del pato. Larry performs in drag as Lola von Miramar since 2010 and has appeared in several episodes of the YouTube series Cooking with Drag Queens. He is currently writing a book on contemporary Puerto Rican performance.

Aurora Santiago Ortiz
Aurora Santiago Ortiz is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Chicane/Latine Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on antiracist feminisms, decolonial perspectives, and participatory action research. Her work has been published in the Centro Journal: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, Chicana/Latina Studies Journal, and the International Journal of Qualitative Research among others. She has also contributed to Society and Space, NACLA, The Abusable Past blog of the Radical History Review, Electric Marronage, Open Democracy, Caliban’s Readings, and Zora magazine. Her current book manuscript entitled Circuits of Self-Determintion: Mapping Radical Solidarities and Infrastructures of Resistance in Twenty-first Century Puerto Rico explores anarchist, anticolonial, feminist, and antiracist grassroots projects and activism that center a prefigurative politics of decolonization in the present.