Year 3: Rooted & Relational, 2026-2027 Black Cuerpas: Race, Body Politics & Culture

The Center for Puerto Rican Studies invites applications for the 2026-2027 cohort of the CENTRO Rooted & Relational Research Initiative, funded by the Mellon Foundation. This program convenes scholars, writers, artists, and faculty in a cohort model fellowship program that responds to CENTRO’s annual theme. The fellowships run for one year (August 2026-July 2027). Fellows will spend their time at CENTRO working on their specific research projects and will be given a shared office space and access to CENTRO research resources and support. 

The 2026-2027 theme, Black Cuerpas: Race, Body Politics & Culture, invites researchers who engage in the study of the ways that race, sex, gender, and body politics shape the histories and lived experiences of Boricuas across both the diaspora and the archipelago. We underscore this iteration of bodies, cuerpas, in order to pay close attention to the interplay of bodies, sex, race, and gendered language. Because Black Puerto Rican women and Afro-descendant communities face an exacerbating set of economic, ecological, educational, medical, laborial, penal, and femicide crises that are overlapping and interconnected and which impact individuals and communities in increasingly disconcerting and often life-threatening ways. This theme asks: What structures of power created these dynamics and what incisive and creative inroads have Afro-Puerto Rican communities accrossthe archipelago and diaspora made to address and transform these conditions? 

In focusing on Afro-Puerto Ricans, the group that José Luis González described as “los primeros puertorriqueños” (El país de cuatro pisos, 1980), this year’s theme is anchored in a material, discursive, ontological, and phenomenological experiences of Blackness in Puerto Rico and its diasporas. Furthermore, by foregrounding Blackness and Afro-Indigeneity in a field that has too often relied on myths of racial democracy, and discourses of La Gran Familia Puertorriqueña, we are able to more directly address issues of juridical, linguistic, archival, and cultural forms of anti-Black racism and exclusion. This theme challenges us to rethink familiar stories, uplift neglected genealogies, and engage with the complexities of embodiment, identity, and power in Puerto Rican life across the archipelago and diaspora.

The group will be asked to center Black and Afro-Indigenous Puerto Rican cuerpas and these lived experiences as a site of knowledge, history, and cultural traditions. At its core, this theme asks: what becomes possible when we place the question of racialized Blackness and embodied experiences at the center of our inquiries? How do histories of racism, resistance, intimacy, sexuality, care, and violence register on the body, and how have these embodied realities been documented, ignored, or erased? What are some of the most pressing data-driven, artistic, and archival research initiatives in Afro-Puerto Rican communities, projects, and enclaves? What can be gained in gathering together some of the leading thinkers in the field of Puerto Rican Studies and its intersecting disciplines and practices around these critical sites of inquiry? These questions, and others will guide our discussions during this year-long seminar, where we will be considering different uses of the archive and explore how these spaces, collections, and communities are transformed and transforming themselves through anti-colonial/decolonial, feminist, and queer lenses. 

Possible Topics:

• Health; maternal and fetal mortality 
• Histories of freedom; slavery; cimarronaje
• Racialized policing; state violence; legal studies
• Feminisms; solidarity movements; relationality
• Genealogy; archival study; public/digital archives   
• Anti-racism movements; colorism 
• Queer/cuir and trans experiences 
• Embodiment; labor; care work; community building  
• Spiritualities; religious histories
• Media; digital humanities; public humanities 
• Food culture; culinary histories 
• Music; sonic; performance; popular culture 
• Mapping; geographies; cartographies; land practices 
• Education; pedagogy; participatory action research 
• Literary study; poetics; creative writing
• Visual arts (especially performance and printmaking) 

We invite applications from scholars in all fields of study and disciplines, including creative writing, sonic, and visual arts. 

Expectations for Fellows:

• Fellows are required to attend weekly hybrid seminar meetings on Wednesdays from 10-1pm EST. Fellows in residence are expected to join in person and hybrid fellows are expected to join via zoom for the duration of the seminar. 
• Fellows will give two virtual guest lectures for an undergraduate course in Puerto Rican Studies in the Department of Africana, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies (AFPRL) at Hunter College.
• Fellows are expected to attend (in person or online) the capacity building workshops which will be curated with attention to the interests and needs of the cohort. 
• The entire cohort of fellows will all gather three times during the tenure of the fellowship (CENTRO will cover associated costs):
  • an early September 2026 kick-off retreat at CENTRO in El Barrio
  • a writing retreat in Puerto Rico from January 10-15, 2027
  • a final thematic symposium in May 2027 at CENTRO in El Barrio

Qualifications: 

Hybrid Fellows

We will select up to five hybrid fellows and will award each $25,000

• Open to researchers and artists working on the annual theme who are unable to relocate to New York City for the duration of the fellowship year.
• PhD is not required, but fellows must have extensive background in Puerto Rican Studies.

Artist-In-Residence

We will select one artist in-residence and will be awarded $75,000 

• Open to artists, of all disciplines, working on the annual theme.
• PhD is not required, but fellows must have extensive background in Puerto Rican Studies.
• Must be in residence at CENTRO in New York City for the duration of the 2026-2027 academic year.

Dissertation Fellows

We will select up to two dissertation fellows and will award each $25k

• Must be ABD (all but dissertation) in a related discipline by July 1, 2026.
• Can be hybrid or in-person at CENTRO in New York City.
• One of the 3 reference letters must come from the dissertation advisor.
• May be hybrid or in residence 

How to Apply

Please submit the following through Submittable:

• Cover letter describing related qualifications, experience, and proposed research activities
• Current CV
• Writing sample related to the position (20-25 double spaced pages) or artist portfolio
• One page course proposal (brief course description and selected readings)
• Contact information for 3 professional references

To apply, please fill out an application here.

About CENTRO

El Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños—CENTRO—The Center for Puerto Rican Studies is the oldest and largest university-based research institute, library, and archive exclusively dedicated to the Puerto Rican experience in the United States. It was founded in 1973 by a coalition of students, faculty, and activists to support the fledgling field of Puerto Rican Studies in the City University of New York and to promote access to higher education by those of Puerto Rican descent. At the heart of these founders’ mission was the need for scholarly analysis of Puerto Ricans’ presence in the United States and the systemic forces that have subjugated and marginalized them within American society. In the present, we continue expanding our efforts to collect, preserve, and provide access to archival and library resources documenting the history and culture of Puerto Ricans. We do so in broad and inclusive ways and encourage interdisciplinary research into new emerging fields of study and phenomena that are traditionally invisible to researchers, as well as emerging issues that are dramatically changing our lives and ways of living today.

If you have any questions about these positions, please email programs@centropr.app.