CLS Core Faculty Dr. Yomaira Figueroa receives tenure

June 25, 2020

MSU's Chicano/Latino Studies Program would like to congratulate CLS Core Faculty Dr. Yomaira Figueroa, Associate Professor of English, on receiving tenure! Well deserved!

Dr. Figueroa works on 20th century U.S. Latinx Caribbean, Afro-Latinx, and Afro-Hispanic literature and culture. Her current book project, Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literature, focuses on diasporic and exilic Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, and Equatoguinean texts in contact. Framed with critical attention to decolonial thought, women of color feminisms, and feminist philosophy, the book complicates and enriches ongoing conversations and debates in Black/Latinx/Hispanophone studies through a sustained mediation on poetics and cultural productions. A native of Puerto Rico, Yomaira was raised in Hoboken, NJ and is a first-generation high school and college graduate. She has served on the secretariat of the Caribbean Philosophical Association since 2010 and was the project coordinator for the Women of Color Initiatives Project (organizing the 25th Anniversary Empowering Women of Color Conference) at UC Berkeley. In the spring of 2016, Yomaira and Professor Rae Paris founded the a Women of Color Initiatives Project at Michigan State. Since then, they have organized a bi-annual speaker series, health and wellness programs, and other related events for women of color and their allies.