About

I am a specialist in the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and Latin American, and Afro-Latinx communities in the U.S.

I am deeply committed to creating opportunities that support racial and gender equity through teaching, research, and educational programming.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Dr. Michele Reid-Vazquez

Dr. Reid-Vazquez is an Endowed Chair of Race, Rascism and Racial Justice, and E. Frederick Morrow Associate Professor of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and Africana Studies at Bowdoin College. Her research and teaching specializations are the African Diaspora in the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Atlantic World, and Afro-Latinx History in the U.S., with an emphasis on slavery and freedom, race and gender relations, politics, migration, identity, and digital humanities.

Prior to joining Bowdoin College, she served as a tenured faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh in the following capacities: Associate Professor of Africana Studies; Founding Director of the Center for Ethnic Studies Research; Director of the Afrolatinidad Studies Initiative; Project Director of the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute: Transnational Dialogues in Afro-Latin Amerian and Afro-Latinx Studies; and Director of the Afro-Cuban History and Culture Study Abroad Program. In 2023, the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion awarded her the Martin Luther King, Jr. Creating A Just Community Award for her efforts to foster equity and belonging among faculty and students.

She also created and directs the Afrolatinidad Studies Institute, which seeks to expand transnational, transregional, and interdisciplinary research, education, digital humanities, and programming in the global arenas of Afro-Latin American Afro-Latinx studies. Core projects include the “Transnational Dialogues in Afrolatinidad” webinar series and the Dialogues in Afrolatinidad podcast.

Along with her book, The Year of the Lash: Free People of Color in Cuba and the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World (2011), she has published numerous articles in a variety of edited volumes and journals, and presents regularly at national and international conferences. Current projects explore the Caribbean in the age of revolution, family history and memory in Haiti, Cuba and South Carolina, and U.S. Afro-Latinx community formation and civil rights.

As a specialist of the African Diaspora in Latin American and Afro-Latinx studies, and as a woman of African descent, she has a deep engagement with the histories of minoritized populations. These multiple contexts have fueled her sense of responsibility to create environments that support racial and gender equity through mentoring, teaching, research, and educational programming.