We are very excited to announce the newest members of the Puerto Rico Syllabus team: our Curricular Fellows & Research Fellow!

Ashley Coleman Taylor, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. As an interdisciplinary ethnographer of circum-Caribbean descent, she specializes in the intersecting lived experiences of embodiment, Black genders, and Africana religions in Puerto Rico and her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Her book-in-progress is tentatively titled Majestad Negra: Race, Class, Gender and Religious Experience in the Puerto Rican Imaginary. It is an intersectional Black feminist approach to race, class, gender, and coloniality in Puerto Rico. The manuscript was a finalist for the University of Illinois/National Women’s Studies Association First Book Prize.

A note about her work with the Puerto Rico Syllabus:

“The section I am developing asks that readers employ an intersectional feminist lens to examine the debt crisis through the historical and present-day boundaries of racialized embodiment and land. We will explore how the relationship between Black women’s bodies and geography in Puerto Rico may help us understand the ways in which race, gender, and agency inform notions of debt, lack, ownership and sovereignty. I ask, how might the historical status of Black women’s bodies as property shift the discourse of debt and colonialism? I will specifically use the idea of racialized property to understand how Black geographies, embodiment, and residential segregation in Puerto Rico reflect various iterations of materiality and race.”

Daniel Vázquez Sanabria is an undergraduate senior double majoring in Puerto Rican and Latino Studies and Art History at CUNY-Brooklyn College. His work focuses on deaf and Black deaf activisms, transnational networks, and cultural and linguistic identity negotiations in post-María Puerto Rico. He will continue developing his work as part of his dissertation for the University of Texas at Austin’s Mexican American and Latina/o Studies PhD Program. His work is located at the intersections of Linguistic Anthropology, Puerto Rican Studies, and the arts. He is also the current President of the Puerto Rican Alliance, CUNYs longest-standing Latinx student organization.

A note of his work with the Puerto Rico Syllabus:

“My project consists of exploring the different ways in which the Puerto Rico Syllabus website can be more accessible to all of communities alike. Mainly, I am interested in understanding how the website reacts to accessibility tools, how it can better assist visitors, and what can continue promoting the Puerto Rico Syllabus’ belief of collaboration.”