Emma Amador

Dr. Emma Amador is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Connecticut whose work focuses on Puerto Ricans, Latinas in the US, and women’s and gender history. Her first book, The Politics of Care: Puerto Rican Women Organizing for Social Justice after 1917, is forthcoming from Duke University Press (May 2025). She is working on a second book, Bright Futures: Antonia Pantoja and the Practice of Ethnic Studies, as well as a project on the history of Puerto Rican community organizers in the US. She has published in Labor, Modern American History, and International Labor and Working-Class History.

As a fellow, I will complete my second book, Bright Futures: Antonia Pantoja and the Practice of Ethnic Studies, a biography of Afro-Puerto Rican civil rights activist Antonia Pantoja. This book will introduce readers to Pantoja’s life and examine her political work and contributions to the history of education in the United States. It will examine how Pantoja’s work agitating for bilingual education and Puerto Rican Studies resulted in significant changes to educational policy and the forging of new educational institutions, which have been foundational to contemporary demands for Ethnic Studies within and beyond the academy.