Founding Director and Principal Investigator

Dr. Nwankwo is Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University, with secondary appointments and affiliations with the Department of Teaching and Learning, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the Program in African American and Diaspora Studies. She earned her Ph.D. from Duke University in 1999.

Professor Nwankwo’s research has focused on encounters among African-American, Latin American, and West Indian peoples in the areas of culture, identity, and ideology with the goal of understanding the persistent barriers to progressive cross-group engagements. Her book, Black Cosmopolitanism(2005), is a comparative study of people of African descent in Cuba, the U.S., and the British West Indies in the wake of the Haitian Revolution. In it, she reveals that fear fostered by the revolution determined and has continued to determine the ways African-descended peoples in this hemisphere relate to each other, as well as to other American populations. The implications of this analysis attempts to understand whether relations between U.S. African Americans and recent immigrants to the U.S. are significant.

Professor Nwankwo has also provided new insight into U.S. African American-Latino/Latin American-Caribbean relations through articles that have appeared in journals such as American Literary History, Radical History Review, and Cuban Studies/Estudios Cubanos. Her other publications include African Routes, Caribbean Roots, Latino Lives-a special issue of the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic World (edited with Mamadou Diouf) focused on music and dance, and Critical Approaches to Louise Bennett-a special issue of the Journal of West Indian Literature.

Research Assistant

Courtney Ariel Bowden moved to Nashville, Tennessee from her home of Southern California, where she graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in English literature. Currently she is a graduate student at Vanderbilt Divinity School, with concentrations in Religion Arts & Culture and Gender & Sexuality. 

Diana Espinosa

Carolina Guilbauth

David Joseph

Jorge Alexander

Andres Culiolis

Jorge Gutierrez

Sonia Velasquez

Aileen Alegria

Sary Osorio

Karen Waldemen

Dora Ferrabone

Stephan Fernandez

Patsy Espinoza

Dona White

Suhairah Sadiq

José A. Rodríguez

Kevin Fragueiro

José López

Mitzy Gómez

Maricarmen Lanuza

Shiara Ocaña

Asociación de Amigos del Muso Etnocaribeo de Bocas del Toro (AAMECAB)

Bradley Academy

Patterson Community Center

Sociedad de Amigos del Museo Afroantillano de Panama (SAMAAP)

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL Panama)

Instituto Episcopal San Cristóbal

Instituto Panamericano

The Mellon Foundation

Center for  the Americas Working Group Grant

Center for Latin American Studies Curriculum Development Grant

Center for Latin American Studies K-12 Education Digital Resource Grant

Faculty Development Grant

Research Scholars’ Grant Program

Undergraduate Summer Research Program Grant

Poindexter Grant