Puerto Rico—Unbound Histories, Livable Futures
Lisa Materson
History
Lisa G. Materson is a professor of US women’s and gender history at the University of California, Davis, and a specialist in US women's political history. Professor Materson's research focuses on women’s involvement in social and political justice movements in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She uses intersectional frameworks to study how ideas about women and gender shaped diverse political strategies and forms of resistance in the US past.
She is the author of Radical Solidarity: Ruth Reynolds, Political Allyship, and the Battle for Puerto Rico’s Independence (2024), which recovers a central yet overlooked figure in U.S. anticolonialism and reconsiders the place of Puerto Rican independence in U.S. history. She is also the author of For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois, 1877–1932 ( 2009), and coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of American Women’s and Gender History (2018).
A Message to Students and Parents
I am delighted to work alongside Professor Diana Aramburu of Spanish and Portuguese to introduce students to Puerto Rico's history, culture, and society through an interdisciplinary lens. I study the historical intersections of gender, U.S. colonialism, and the movement for Puerto Rico's independence. Over many years, I have traveled across the archipelago conducting archival research, recording oral histories, and learning from archivists, community members, and activists. These experiences have fueled my ongoing exploration of the history of Puerto Rico and its relationship to the United States. I invite students to join Professor Aramburu and me in connecting with the people, places, and conversations that make Puerto Rico central to contemporary discussions about colonialism and decolonization."
Diana Aramburu
Spanish and Portuguese
Diana Aramburu (Associate Professor of Spanish, HaRCs) is a prize-winning expert on twentieth-century Iberian and Latin American literatures and cultures and has published widely on the ongoing epidemic of femicide in Puerto Rico.