The Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) at Hunter College has announced that The Diaspora The Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) at Hunter College has announced that The Diaspora Solidarities Lab (DSL) is coming to CENTRO, alongside its $2 million grant renewal from the Mellon Foundation. DSL is a Black feminist digital humanities initiative that supports solidarity work in Black and Ethnic Studies with a commitment to transformative justice, led collaboratively by CENTRO Directora Dr. Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez and historian Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson (Johns Hopkins). The Open Boat Lab (OBL), directed by Dr. Figueroa-Vásquez, initially housed at Michigan State University, will now find a new home at CENTRO and Hunter College. The OBL’s objective is to support curation, storytelling, and community organizing development with the creation of digital archives, museum and gallery exhibits, and community workshops.
During its initial grant, the DSL has developed twelve microlabs, supported over forty research fellows, engaged with three community partners (Yarumo Taller de Imagenes Experimentales in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico; the Black School in New Orleans, Louisiana; The Avery Center for Black Research in Charleston, South Carolina), and supported the work of over 26 Community Fellows with $5k project grants. The DSL has also supported seven early career scholars through the DSL Writers & Manuscript Workshops and has held three symposia and over 35 public and private events. These are just a few of the achievements DSL has been able to accomplish from 2022-2024.
At CENTRO, the DSL microlabs that will continue during the 2025-2027 renewal period are:
● The Survival of a People, which has spearheaded a digital and material oral history archive of the first Puerto Rican diaspora photodocumentary project (led by the late photographer and activist Frank Espada from 1979-1982). In addition to the transcriptions and translations of the over 130 oral histories recorded by Espada, the lab is producing a series of projects including: two traveling museum and gallery exhibitions; a five-episode podcast highlighting these histories; and a ArcGIS Storymaps project; all of which the Center for Puerto Rican Studies Archive of the Puerto Rican Diaspora will steward.
● The Afro-Latinx Lab, which supports curation, storytelling, and popular education across the Black Latinx diasporic experience with a focus on documenting histories and activism around femicide and intimate gender violence. An experimental lab, the researchers have focused on curating a series of exhibitions, highlighting Afro-Latinx art in physical and virtual forms, and gathering stories for the creation of a digital femicide archive that breaks the silences around gender-based violence in collaboration with community partners in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and their diasporas.
● The Kitsimba Project, which is developing a digital archive for Dr. M. Jacqui Alexander, a Black feminist writer, scholar, and elder in collaboration with the Tobago Spirit Center. In addition to site visits and curating the material archive, this lab will develop a site that will document Professor Alexander’s oeuvre and specifically her work on Kitsimba, a guiding ancestor for Alexander’s writing and projects.
Additionally, three microlabs will remain active under the directorship of Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson’s Community Knowledge Lab at Johns Hopkins (The Black Louisiana History Incubators, The Black Testimony Project, and The Translation Lab). The remaining six DSL microlabs will transition to new institutions and be provided seed-funding from the DSL renewal grant with the hope that these microlabs will proliferate into new projects directed by former fellows and collaborators. In this renewal period, DSL and CENTRO are committed to “deep work” that is, a commitment to supporting the rooting of its previous collaborators and developing publication outputs for this incredibly successful project. The continued goal is to document, archive, and make accessible the products of the work of the DSL through the preparation of several publications that document the DSL’s exhibitions, public and digital writings, digital sites, and a final DSL manuscript.
“I am honored to have the opportunity to continue the work of the DSL through the support of this Higher Learning Grant from the Mellon Foundation,” said Dr. Yomaira C.Figueroa-Vásquez, CENTRO’s Directora and PI and co-director of the DSL. “Over the past three years, we have developed and nurtured a broad array of transdisciplinary humanities projects that have been community-informed and anchored in ethical practices. Bringing this inspiring project to CENTRO is auspicious because CENTRO’s research mission is deeply rooted in a history of community care, activism, and advocacy.”
We are thrilled to continue this collaboration with Dr. Figueroa-Vasquez,” said co-PI Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson. “The next phase of the DSL Community Knowledge Lab at Johns Hopkins will focus on deepening our collaborations with Moorland-Springarn Research Center, thanks to Dr. Ben Talton. We are also excited to learn from experts in community knowledge and Black feminist thought including Dr. Nadejda Webb and Muse360’s Sharayna Christmas.”