*** Keynote Address video will remain unavailable for the next 6-12 months. We hope to make the presentation public in approximately one year, as there is an embargo on the presentation. ***

The LACUNY Institute 2020/2021 Planning Committee will live-stream the Opening Session, which includes welcoming remarks and the Keynote Address to be delivered by Dr. Lorgia García Peña.

Dr. Lorgia García Peña is a first generation Dominican Latinx Studies scholar from Trenton, New Jersey. She studies blackness, colonialism and diaspora with a special focus on dominicanidades. She studies literary and cultural texts in conversation with historical processes and following a methodology for archiving injustice that challenges the heteronormative, Eurocentric production of knowledge that has persistently excluded and silenced the lives, histories and epistemology of black and brown people from traditional archives, libraries and books. Her work is grounded on social justice, women of color feminism and Afro-Latinx episteme.  She has a strong commitment to undocumented students, students of color, and first generation students. She followed a model of  engaged scholarship that bridges gaps between university and community both in her research and her teaching.