This event is organized and presented by the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute. 

Please register here to attend this event, either in person or online.

Guest speakers:

• Rachel Afi Quinn, Associate Professor, Comparative Cultural Studies and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies, University of Houston
   
• Romelinda Grullón Miguel, Executive Director, Center for Dominican Women Puerto Rico

4pm-5:30pm: "Doing Gender in Dominican Studies Workshop"

Dr. Quinn will lead a workshop oriented to the needs of graduate students and junior scholars in Dominican studies. As a gender studies professor, Dr. Quinn will provide an overview of her own academic trajectory and a discussion of the ways she built a transnational feminist cultural studies methodology to respond to her research questions about contemporary Dominican women's identities. Workshop participants will be invited to share their own topics of study and discuss the many ways that including a gender analysis and intersectional approach might further their work across disciplines. This workshop is open to all, whether you have an existing research project or are just curious about current work in Dominican studies.

Dr. Rachel Afi Quinn is a Ghanaian American scholar and associate professor at the University of Houston's Department of Comparative Cultural Studies and the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. Her research focuses on racial ambiguity, gender, sexuality, social media, and visual culture in the African Diaspora. Dr. Quinn has published work on topics of feminism, race, and visual culture in the Dominican Republic in journals such as The Black Scholar, Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture, and Small Axe. In 2015, Dr. Quinn was part of a filmmaking team that produced the documentary "Cimarrón Spirit" about contemporary Afro-Dominican identities. She received the Ross M. Lence Award for Teaching Excellence in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences in 2018. She is a 2022-23 fellow at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and a recipient of a 2023-24 National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship for her second book project, a black feminist biography on the life of mixed race child prodigy and journalist Philippa Duke Schuyler. Her first book, Being La Dominicana: Race and Identity in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2021. 

5:45pm-7:15pm: "The Socioeconomic Conditions of Dominican Women in Puerto Rico"

The Executive Director of the Center for Dominican Women Puerto Rico Romelinda Grullón Miguel will present a study about the conditions of Dominican women in Puerto Rico, followed by a documentary film.

Romelinda Grullón Miguel, a native of La Vega, Dominican Republic, holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and a Master's degree in Social Work Administration from Universidad Inter-Americana of Puerto Rico. In her master's thesis, she explored the application of an empowerment model in grassroots organizations. In 2003, Grullón Miguel founded the Centro de la Mujer Dominicana, of which she is the executive director. She has extensive experience working with underserved populations in the DR, New York, and Puerto Rico. She has collaborated with different organizations and institutions that fight for women's rights. She is recognized for her tireless fight against injustices and for contributing to promote changes in public policy. For her work, including the protection of the rights of immigrant women, she has received several awards, among which a recognition by Universidad Inter Americana in Puerto Rico as an outstanding graduate in the field of Social Work. She was also recognized by the Chamber of Deputies of the Dominican Republic as an Outstanding Dominican Woman who contribute to the well-being of Dominican women. She is currently working on describing a profile of the typical aggressors who assault immigrant women.

Moderators:

Dr. Norma Fuentes-Mayorga, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Latin American and Latina/o Studies Program at the City College of New York. Dr. Fuentes-Mayorga's research documents the growing immigration of higher educated, Afro-Caribbean, and Indigenous women from the Dominican Republic and Mexico into the U.S., their mobility life chances, and the contributions they make to the community of origin and of destination. This is the focus of her recent book, From Homemakers, To Breadwinners, To Community Leaders: Migrating Women, Class, and Color (Rutgers University Press, 2023). A second project funded by the Social Sciences Research Council and the Russel Sage Foundation examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on vulnerable Latino/a/x families with mixed immigrant status and the consequences for their US-born youths. Her research has been published in the United States, Latin America, and Europe, among these, in The Annual Review of Sociology; Latino Studies, and Research Papers in Education. Dr. Fuentes-Mayorga received her Ph.D. from Columbia University and completed postdoctoral fellowships on comparative education and migration (University of Amsterdam) and on development, race, and ethnicity in Latin America (Princeton University).

Rosita Romero, co- founder and Executive Director, Dominican Women’s Development Center, New York. Born in the Dominican Republic, Ms. Romero has a Master’s degree in Social Work from Hunter College and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology from the University of New Haven. She has considerable experience in the areas of community organizing, advocacy, coalition building, housing, women’s issues, immigration, health, and family matters. She has been a presenter at many conferences in colleges and other major institutions throughout the United States, speaking about the situation of Latinos in general and Dominican women in particular, and a guest speaker on television and radio shows; she has appeared in several newspaper articles in relation to this topic. She has received over 40 awards and is recognized as a strong leader committed to social justice. In the process of becoming a leader she has motivated, helped, and inspired many others. Ms. Romero was profiled as a Hispanic Role Model on WCBS-TV in 2003 during Hispanic Heritage Month; she was selected by the New York Post as one of the 25 Most Influential Latinos in the City of New York in 2003; and in 2004 she was selected by Univision as an Unsung Heroine in the Dominican Community during Dominican Heritage Month. She has been featured in Latina Magazine, The Cut, and Quisqueya Life highlighting successful Dominican Women.

Reception to follow.

This event is presented in collaboration with