Bio

Prof. Lorgia García-Peña is the author of The Borders of Dominicanidad: Race, Nations and Archives of Contradictions (Duke University Press, 2016) a study of the impact of stories — historical and fictional — on the national and racial identity of a people. Offering the Dominican experience as case study, this book shows how the stories of a nation create marginality through acts of exclusion. These exclusionary acts are linked to the tensions between colonial desire and the aspiration for political independence. The book also shows how these official stories of exclusion, though influential in shaping a country’s identity, are always contested, negotiated, and even redefined through acts of resistance linked to the tensions between history — what is perceived as evidence of fact — and fiction — what is presumed to be invention: cultural productions, oral histories, and rumors. The Borders of Dominicanidad is the winner of Winner of the 2017 National Women’s Studies Association Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize, the  2016 LASA Latino/a Studies Book Award and the 2016 Isis Duarte Book Prize in Haiti and Dominican Studies.

Academic Degrees

B.A., Journalism, Spanish Language and Literature (Highest Honors), Rutgers University, New Brunswick

M.A. Latin American Literature and Cultures, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

PhD American Studies, specialization in Latino/a Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

At MIT

Afro-Latinx Heritage Series: A virtual talk with Lorgia García-Peña, 11 December 2020

MLK Luncheon Seminar- Mother and Whore: Colonialism, Immigration and Black Womanhood in the Diaspora, 29 April 2019

Dr. Yomaira Figueroa "Intimacies," 8 April 2019

WGS Intellectual Forum: "Intra-Colonial Migrations and Black Bodies in Contemporary Italy," 17 October 2018

Josefina Baez: As Is E,’ 6 September 2018

MLTalks: Undocumented students, equal access to higher education, and Freedom University Georgia, 9 April 2018

Feminisms Unbound: Women Of Color Feminisms In Authoritarian Times, 15 November 2017