Frances Negrón-Muntaner

Frances Negrón-Muntaner is a filmmaker, writer, curator, scholar and Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where she is also the founding curator of the Latino Arts and Activism Archive and the Gallery at the Center. Among her books and publications are: Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture (CHOICE Award, 2004), The Latino Media Gap (2014), and Sovereign Acts: Contesting Colonialism in Native Nations and Latinx America (2017). Among her films are Brincando el charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican (1994), Small City, Big Change (2013), and War for Guam (2015). For her work as a scholar and filmmaker, Negrón-Muntaner has received Ford, Truman, Rockefeller, and Pew fellowships. In 2008, the United Nations’ Rapid Response Media Mechanism recognized her as a global expert in the areas of mass media and Latin/o American studies. She is also recipient of the Lenfest Award, one of Columbia University’s most prestigious recognitions for excellence in teaching and scholarship (2012) and the Latin American Studies Association’s Frank Bonilla Public Intellectual Award (2019). From 2016-2019, she served as the director of Unpayable Debt, a working group at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference that studied debt regimes in the world. During her tenure, she co-created “Caribbean Syllabus: Life and Debt in the Caribbean” and launched Valor y Cambio, an art, digital storytelling and just economy project.