Amarilys Estrella is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and a faculty affiliate for the Center for African and African American Studies and the Center for the Study of Gender, Women and Sexuality at Rice University. Her research interests broadly focus on the intersections of race and gender within transnational movements, Black Latin American and Latinx identity, as well as human rights and anti-racist activism. Her first book project investigates how Blackness and Black identity is produced, employed and transformed through everyday encounters among stateless Black grassroots activists of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic. Estrella is also the co-editor with Dr. Melissa Maldonado Salcedo of Harmonizing Latina Visions and Voices: Cultural Explorations of Entornos, which seeks to explore and engage the many voices of mujerismos disrupting the silences and making visible the ways in which “genealogies of power” get mapped through and because of the body. This book volume engages multiple genres including poetry, visual art, and scholarly essays.
Estrella’s work has been recognized by several organizations. She was a 2022-2024 fellow for Duke University’s Summer Institute on Tenure & Professional Advancement. She was a 2023 Women of Color Leadership Project Fellow for the National Women’s Studies Association. Along with Dr. Victoria Massie, Estrella is the recipient of Rice University's 2022-2024 BRIDGE (Building Research on Inequality and Diversity to Grow Equity) Award for their project "Stressful Crossings: How Black Immigrants' Health is Immobilized in Houston." She was also the 2020-2021 American Council of Learned Societies' (ACLS) Emerging Voices Fellow.
COURSES
Introduction to Social/Cultural Anthropology
Introduction to African and African American Studies: Knowing Blackness
Black Decolonial Feminisms in the Americas
When Human Rights Fail
Zombies and Ghosts: Monsters and Spectral Figures in the Social Imaginary
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Muertos Civiles: Mourning the Casualties of Racism in the Dominican Republic
Confident futures: Community-based organizations as first responders and agents of change in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic
Dominican Republic’s Neofascist Paramilitaries Double Down on Right-Wing Repression.
Black Latinx Encuentros: Embodied Knowledge and Reciprocal Forms of Knowledge Sharing
El Cruce de la Muerte: Fieldwork and Carework at the Crossroad of Death.” Trauma and Resilience Series