IMAGINING PUERTO RICAN FUTURES
Imagining Puerto Rican Futures advances inquiry, mentorship, public dialogue, and new approaches to the present and future of Puerto Rican Studies. This spoke looks to potentiate dialogue and knowledge production while interrogating the field. It will do so through public scholarship, academic programming, and mentorship.
ABOUT THE SPOKE
Imagining Puerto Rican Futures creates spaces for intellectual inquiry, exchange, and experimentation. This spoke asks how Puerto Rican Studies can respond to the field’s most urgent questions while opening new paths for research, artistic practice, public dialogue, and collective knowledge production.
Its programs bring leading and emerging voices into conversation across disciplines, institutions, and communities. The Francisco A. Scarano Lecture Series, the Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies Symposium, and El Taller: Solidarity Mentorship Workshops connect public scholarship, sustained dialogue, and close mentorship.
Together, these initiatives support work that examines the present while developing new methods, archives, relationships, and imaginaries for Puerto Rican futures.
FEATURES
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FEATURES
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THE FRANCISCO SCARANO LECTURE SERIES
The Francisco Scarano Lecture Series is a series of lectures, held annually, designed to bring some of the most prominent scholars in Puerto Rican Studies to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The speaker will deliver a public lecture and will also meet with members of the broader UW-Madison community. The name honors Francisco Scarano, Puerto Rican historian and emeritus professor at UW-Madison.
INTERROGATING THE FUTURE OF PUERTO RICAN STUDIES SYMPOSIUM
The Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies Symposium began in April 2026 as a one-day symposium around the publication of Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies, a transdisciplinary book edited by Aurora Santiago Ortiz and Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo, with contributions from twenty-one additional scholars across the field of Puerto Rican Studies (Duke University Press, 2026). Moving forward, the symposium will serve as a space for Solidary Ecosystems Fellows to present their work.
EL TALLER: SOLIDARITY MENTORSHIP WORKSHOPS
El Taller is an annual mentorship program in which the PRSH invites up to three Puerto Rican Studies scholars (graduate students and faculty at all ranks, including non-tenure track) and pairs them with a senior scholar of their choosing on campus to workshop a research project. These scholars will present their research to the broader UW-Madison community in a Puerto Rican Studies Panel.
WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING
