Center for Puerto Rican Studies-Centro
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Understanding, Preserving and Sharing the Puerto Rican Experience in the United States
Puerto Rico has a q***r literary canon, you were just never taught it. This Pride Month, we honor five q***r Puerto Rican poets who put q***r love, desire, and survival on the page, often long before it was safe to do so.
Víctor Fragoso was one of the first openly gay Puerto Rican poets and playwrights in New York, writing q***rness and the diaspora into his work before AIDS took his life in 1982. Alfredo Villanueva-Collado, a CUNY professor, wrote unapologetically political and ho******ic poetry. Luz María Umpierre's 1987 collection The Margarita Poems became a landmark of le***an erotic poetry and her own coming out, and she coined a name for reading q***rness in literature: "Homocriticism."
Manuel Ramos Otero is widely considered the most important openly gay Puerto Rican writer of the twentieth century, moving to New York to live freely and confronting AIDS in his final poems. Nemir Matos Cintrón was the pioneer of le***an Puerto Rican literature. Her book, “Las Mujeres No Hablan Así” was one of the earliest works to openly express le***an desire, female eroticism, and the critique of the traditional patriarchal narrative.
Many of these legacies live here at The Center of Puerto Rican Studies. Explore them today! 📚
🔗 https://centroca.hunter.cuny.edu/
06/03/2026
Puerto Rico.
U.S. Virgin Islands.
Guam.
Northern Mariana Islands.
American Samoa.
The U.S. Territories are more than shores at the service of the American Empire. For decades, millions who call them home have fostered connections across oceans and resisted colonial governance while preserving indigenous traditions and more.
Day two of our symposium, A Sea of Islands: U.S. Territories in Relation, opens with a plenary featuring researchers and activists from Vieques, South Korea, Palau, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, who will explore militarization, resistance, and community resistance across island territories.
Afternoon sessions will examine Indigenous and insular sovereignty, archival self-determination, decolonial approaches to education, and community-led responses to the climate crisis. We will close the gathering with a screening of “HOMEGROWN: A Part Of/Apart From,” followed by a reception celebrating connection and collective action.
https://ow.ly/6MHa50Z6P1a
05/29/2026
Call for Papers 📣
"In Motion: Shifting Geographies of Puerto Rico and the Black Caribbean”
CENTRO Journal invites scholarly and creative contributions for a special issue exploring the cultural, political, and spiritual connections between Puerto Rico and the greater Black Caribbean. We welcome articles, creative pieces, short essays, poetry, and art. This issue takes up themes of solidarity, migration, music, foodways, spiritual traditions, and more.
Submissions accepted in English and Spanish.
Abstract Deadline: August 14, 2026
Click here to learn more and apply! → https://ow.ly/OC9g50Z5iNo
05/26/2026
Reminder!
Deadline next week
Call for Submissions: “Aquí y allá: Puerto Rican Education across the Archipelago and the Diaspora”
CENTRO Journal invites submissions for a special issue titled “Aquí y allá: Puerto Rican Education across the Archipelago and the Diaspora”, guest edited by Daicy Diaz-Granados and Nichole Margarita Garcia.
This issue seeks scholarship and creative work that examines Puerto Rican educational experiences across the archipelago and the diaspora. Submissions may explore topics such as colonialism and educational policy, migration and displacement, language and identity, community knowledge systems and liberatory or futures-oriented educational frameworks.
We welcome a range of formats, including:
- Articles (up to 12,000 words)
- Short essays or interviews (2,000 words)
- Poems (1–3 poems)
- Art or photography (1 piece with brief explanation)
Important deadlines:
Abstract submission: June 4, 2026
Abstract decision: July 8, 2026
Final manuscript submission: October 26, 2026
The special issue will be published in CENTRO Journal (Vol. 39, No. 3) in January 2028.
Click here to learn more → https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/about/opportunities/
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