Dr. Vanessa K. Valdés is the director of the Black Studies Program at The City College of New York-CUNY. A graduate of Yale and Vanderbilt Universities, and an Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, her research interests focus on the cultural production of peoples of African descent throughout the Americas: the United States and Latin America, including the Caribbean and Brazil. She is the editor of The Future Is Now: A New Look at African Diaspora Studies (2012) and Let Spirit Speak! Cultural Journeys through the African Diaspora (2012). She is the author of Oshun's Daughters: The Search for Womanhood in the Americas (2014) and Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (2017).                                  

Dr. Vanessa K. Valdés
Director, Black Studies Program
The City College of New York - CUNY