Emma Amador

Assistant Professor

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Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Assistant Professor of History

Areas of Specialty

Puerto Rico, U.S. Latina/o/x, Caribbean, Latin America, women, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, migrations

Current Research Interests

social welfare, social policy, labor studies, social movements, feminisms

Biography

Dr. Emma Amador is a historian who specializes in the history of Puerto Ricans, Latinas in the United States, and women and gender. She has research and teaching experience in Puerto Rican, United States, Caribbean, and Latin American history.

Dr. Amador’s first book, The Politics of Care Work: Puerto Rican Women Organizing for Social Justice is forthcoming from Duke University Press in May 2025. This book tells the story of Puerto Rican women’s involvement in political activism for social and economic justice in Puerto Rico and the United States throughout the twentieth century. Amador focuses on the experiences and contributions of Puerto Rican social workers, care workers, and caregivers who fought for the compensation of reproductive labor in society and the establishment of social welfare programs. Amador shows how their relentless efforts gradually shifted the field of social work toward social justice and community-centered activism. Their profound and enduring impact on Puerto Rican communities underscores the crucial role of Puerto Rican women’s caregiving labor and activism in building and sustaining migrant communities.

She is currently working on two new books. The first, Bright Futures: Antonia Pantoja and the Practice of Ethnic Studies, is a biography of Afro-Puerto Rican civil rights activist Antonia Pantoja. This book will introduce readers to Pantoja’s life and examine her political work and contributions to the history of education and the formation of “Ethnic Studies” in the United States. The second, Community Work: Puerto Rican Women in the United States, is a long-term project that explores the history of Puerto Rican women as community organizers and welfare rights activists in the United States from 1950 to 2000.

Her work has been published in Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, ILWCH: International Labor and Working-Class History, and Modern American History.

At UConn, her research has been funded by the JEDI Initiative Research Award from the Provost’s Office, a CLAS Research in Academic Themes Award, and a SCHARP Award. She also received a Humanities Faculty Fellowship (2019-2020), a Felberbaum Family Faculty Award, and a Humanities Book Support Award from the Humanities Institute at UConn. Prior to coming to UConn, Amador held a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brown University in the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America and the History Department. Additionally, she was a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow, a Summer Institute on Tenure and Advancement (SITPA) Fellow at Duke University, a Dissertation Fellow at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, CUNY, and a Rackham Merit Fellow at the Graduate School of the University of Michigan.

Dr. Amador was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in New England. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan, an MA from UConn in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, with a focus on Latino/a Studies, and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. She loves New England in the fall, getting involved in art projects of all sorts, watching mystery TV shows, and taking her toddler on adventures.

Selected Publications

Books

The Politics of Care Work: Puerto Rican Women Organizing for Social Justice (Duke University Press, Forthcoming, Spring 2025).

Bright Futures: Antonia Pantoja and the Practice of Ethnic Studies [In preparation]

Community Work: Puerto Rican Women Activists in the United States [In preparation].

Articles & Book Chapters

 “Care Work is Essential: Puerto Rican Feminist Activists and the National Welfare Rights Organization, 1960-1980s,” Journal of American Ethnic History [Conditionally accepted.]

“The Making of a ‘Mainstream Hispanic’ Feminist: Carmen Delgado Votaw, the National Conference of Puerto Rican Women, and the History of US Feminisms after 1970,” for edited volume, Latina/os and U.S. Political Histories by A.K. Sandoval Strausz, Benjamin Johnson, and Geraldo Cadava. [Submitted for review.]

“Unruly Domestics: Puerto Rican Diasporic Careworkers and the Politics of Social Reproduction in the United States, 1940-1970,” for edited volume Care & Capitalism in the Twentieth Century, edited by Kirsten Swinth & Sarah Knott. [In preparation.]

 “Caring for Labor History,” Forum: Starting from Home: Four New Spirits Engage Labor History, LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas (17:4, December 2020): 65-69.

“Linked Histories of Welfare, Labor, and Puerto Rican Migration,” Forum: Puerto Rico and the United States at Critical Junctures, Modern American History (2: Fall 2019): 165-168.

“Women Ask Relief for Puerto Ricans:” Social Workers, the Social Security Act, and Puerto Rican Communities, 1933-1942,” LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History and the Americas (12:3, December 2016): 105-129.

“Organizing Puerto Rican Domestics: Resistance and Household Labor Reform in the Puerto Rican Diaspora after 1930,” ILWCH: International Labor and Working-Class History (No. 8, Fall 2015): 67-86.