Emma Amador

Assistant Professor

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Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Assistant Professor; Joint appointment with El Instituto
Assistant Professor of History and Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies

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

Emma Amador is an Assistant Professor of History and Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies.  Her work focuses on Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans, and U.S. Latina/o/x History with an emphasis on women, gender, and race.  She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, an M.A. from UConn, and a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College.  Before returning to UConn she held a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brown University in the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the History Department (2016-2018).

She is currently completing a book manuscript, Contesting Colonialism: Puerto Ricans and the Politics of Welfare in the 20^th Century that explores the history of welfare, territorial social citizenship, and struggles for social rights in Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican diaspora.  This project examines how the U.S. welfare state became a site where Puerto Ricans have fought for social justice, labor reform, and decolonization.  Her work has received support from Brown University, the SITPA Scholar Mellon Program at Duke University, the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at CUNY, Hunter College, and the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Amador was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in New England. She is happy to have returned to the region and when she isn’t working she enjoys getting involved in art-projects of all sorts, especially painting.

Selected Publications

“Women Ask Relief for Puerto Ricans:” Social Workers, the Social Security Act and Puerto Rican Communities, 1933-1943,” LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History of 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.