Being La Dominicana: Race and Identity in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo

This public lecture focuses on Dr. Rachel Afi Quinn's recent book Being La Dominicana: Race and Identity in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo. The lecture investigates the ways Dominican visual culture portrays Dominican women and how women represent themselves in their own creative endeavors in response to existing stereotypes. Delving into the dynamic realities and uniquely racialized gendered experiences of women in Santo Domingo, Quinn reveals how racial ambiguity and color hierarchy work to shape experiences of identity and subjectivity in the Dominican Republic. She merges analyses of context and interviews with young Dominican women to offer rare insights into a Caribbean society in which the tourist industry and popular media reward, and rely upon, the ability of Dominican women to transform themselves to perform gender, race, and class. Being La Dominicana reveals the little-studied world of today's young Dominican women and what their personal stories and transnational experiences can tell us about the larger neoliberal world.

This public lecture is made possible and supported by an Andrew W. Mellon grant awarded to the Department of Africana, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies from CUNY’s Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI).