Cristina Pérez Jiménez

Assistant Professor, English

Cristina Pérez Jiménez (Ph.D. 2016, Columbia University) is an assistant professor of English at Manhattan College. She specializes in U.S. Latinx and Caribbean cultural studies, with a focus on race and ethnicity, migration and diaspora studies, urban studies, especially NYC, and the histories of the left and ethnic social movements.

Dr. Pérez Jiménez was a recipient of the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2019-2020. She was also awarded the 2016 Bancroft Dissertation Prize, the 2017 Latin American Studies Association’s Latino Studies Section Outstanding Dissertation Award, the 2018 Biennial Puerto Rican Studies Association Dissertation Award, among other recognitions.

She is the co-editor of a bilingual scholarly edition of Guillermo Cotto-Thorner’s Manhattan Tropics/Trópico en Manhattan (Arte Público, 2019), winner of a 2020 International Latino Book Award. Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in Revista Hispánica Moderna, Post45, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, CENTRO Journal: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Diálogo: An Interdisciplinary Studies Journal, and American Quarterly. She is working on a book project titled Here To Stay: The Making of Latinx New York that explores the emergence of a distinctive New York Latinx cultural identity during the sociopolitical conjuncture of the 1930s and 1940s.

Dr. Pérez Jiménez currently serves as the Race and Ethnicity in the Profession delegate to the Assembly of the Modern Language Association.

Education

  • Ph.D. in Latin American and Iberian Cultures and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, 2016.
  • M.Phil. in Latin American and Iberian Cultures and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, 2014.
  • M.A. in Latin American and Iberian Cultures and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, 2011.
  • M.A. in Comparative Literature, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2009, with high honors.
  • B.A. in English, Manhattanville College, 2006, summa cum laude
  • Publications and Scholarly Activities
    • “Silencio en la Casa”: Political Silence and Cultural Conflict between Hispanists and Hispanics in New York during the Spanish Civil War.” Revista Hispánica Moderna 74.1 (June 2021).
    • “The Border’s Bright Dead Things: On Ada Limón’s Poetry,” Post-45, Contemporary Latinx Poetics, Jan. 2020: http://post45.org/2020/01/the-borders-bright-dead-things-on-ada-limons-embodied-poetics/.
    • “Puerto Rican Colonialism, Spanish Caribbean Radicalism and Pueblos Hispanos’ ‘Inter-Nationalist’ Alliance.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism. 23.3 (60): 50-68. *Awarded an Honorable Mention for the Blanca G. Silvestrini Award for Outstanding Article in Puerto Rican Studies by the Latin American Studies Association’s Puerto Rican Studies Section.
    • “Dissident Spirits and the Insular Tradition.” Review of Dissident Spirits: The Post-Insular Imprint in Puerto Rican/Diasporic Literature, by Nancy I. Bird-Soto. New West Indian Guide 94.1 (Spring 2020): 76-77.  Book Review.
    • “Memoria y militancia: La historia oral de Gilberto Concepción de Gracia para el ‘Spanish Book Project.’” In Gilberto Concepción de Gracia. San Juan, PR: Universidad Interamericana, forthcoming.
    • “The Early Latinx Camp Aesthetics of Pedro Caballero’s Paca Antillana (1931).” Puerto Rican Queer Sexualities, special issue of CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 30.2 (Summer 2018): 42-63.
    • “CENTRO Journal: Three Decades of Struggle and Scholarship in Support of Puerto Rican Studies.” Diálogo: An Interdisciplinary Latino Studies Journal 20:2 (October 2017): 33-46.
    • “From the Archives: On Two ‘Lost’ Poems by Julia de Burgos.” CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 29.2 (Summer 2017): 76-91.
    • “On Thinking Cruelty: An Interview with Jean Franco.” American Quarterly 66:3 (September 2014): 791-800.
    • “Voices That Challenge Views: On Nuyorican Poets’ Aesthetic Radicalisms.” Review of In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam, by Urayoán Noel. The NACLA Report 47:3 (Fall 2014): 72-4. Book Review.