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The University of Wisconsin-Madison has just launched a new hub for Puerto Rican Studies, thanks to the work of CLS affiliate faculty member Jorell Meléndez-Badillo and core faculty member Aurora Santiago Ortiz (Gender & Women’s Studies). The pair secured a $3 million grant to fund three years of programming, including symposia, lecturers, and musical performances, and much more, as well as post-doctoral fellowships. The first center of its kind in the Midwest, the Hub will educate the public and enrich conversations on campus and in the community about Puerto Rico and its diaspora. Its roots go back to 1987, when a UW-Madison steering committee on minority affairs recommended the creation of a center on campus for Puerto Rican Studies. Longtime History professor and CLS affiliate Francisco Scarano did much during his distinguished career to advance the field, especially with his book Puerto Rico: Cinco Siglos de Historia. The Hub’s inaugural event attracted some 200 people to the Great Hall in Memorial Union and featured an interactive performance by Los Pleneros de La Cresta, in which audience members took up traditional instruments and joined the group to play plena music. The event attracted coverage from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and the Wisconsin State-Journal, Tone Madison, and the Badger Herald. On October 28th, the Center will present Prof. Scarano himself in a lecture that will initiate a series named in his honor. CLS PA Carmen Ibarra sat down with Profs. Meléndez-Badillo and Santiago-Ortiz to talk about their plans for the Hub and the importance of Puerto Rican studies. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.
[Carmen Ibarra] How did the idea to start the Puerto Rican Studies Hub come about? Why did you feel it was important to create this place on campus?
[Jorell Meléndez-Badillo] When Aurora and I first got to Madison in 2022, we wanted to tap into the tradition that we have here on campus of Puerto Rican Studies, Caribbean Studies, Latin American Studies, Latinx Studies, and sort of expand the field of Puerto Rican Studies on campus. For us, it was very important to make UW-Madison a national and international referent for Puerto Rican studies. By happenstance, we got in touch with the Mellon Foundation. President Elizabeth Alexander of the Mellon Foundation is deeply committed to the Puerto Rico, and so they asked us if we had a vision for Puerto Rican Studies. Part of the intellectual grounding of the Puerto Rican Studies Hub is this idea of interrogating the future of Puerto Rican studies. Aurora and I had been working on a volume titled, Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies, which will be coming out next year in April, with Duke University Press, in which we compile 21 different scholars that are thinking about Puerto Rican studies from different fields of knowledge. We had the chance of materializing something to expand the field [of Puerto Rican studies] not only here at UW, but we see it as a hub for schools across the Midwest.
[Aurora Santiago Ortiz] Not only the Midwest, but nationally, and transnationally as well, and I think that it’s important to bring this to UW also because we’ve discussed how migration patterns are changing for Puerto Ricans in the diaspora. Because of displacement, after climate events, like the hurricane, and other reasons for migration, folks are going to places that are not traditional spaces for Puerto Ricans, so we also thought it was important to pay attention to that. We’re thinking about our own place in the Midwest, and how we can connect to other people doing this work in the area.
[Carmen Ibarra] What is the importance of creating and fostering community?
[Jorell Meléndez-Badillo] The field of Puerto Rican Studies emerged out of community organizing, of student involvement. And so, honoring that tradition of the field, we want to center community. The reason why I became an academic is because I want to take all the knowledge that is produced within academia and take it outside of the ivory tower, to impact communities. That goes in line with the Wisconsin Idea of having the university serve the broader communities outside of the university.
[Aurora Santiago Ortiz] I think that the Hub is a place where people of all backgrounds and majors can come to events and feel connected to other people. At our October 13th launch, Los Pleneros de la Cresta came and gave a talk about their community organizing and their music. They started teaching other folks how to play their music. I had a student tell me that she really enjoyed going there, even though she didn’t understand a word that they were saying. She felt very invited, and very welcome in that space- to sing, to dance, and to participate. I think that is the whole point of what we’re trying to do here.
[Jorell Meléndez-Badillo] Yeah, and just to highlight that point, we also had people that drove all the way from Michigan, from Milwaukee, from Illinois, we had people from all over, which also signals sort of the importance of this type of work.
[Carmen Ibarra] How has the PR Studies Hub has been received by the community?
[Jorell Meléndez-Badillo] The reception has been incredible. For the Francisco Scarano Lecture Series, which we launched in October, we had a lot of people that showed up, uh, it was a very intergenerational crowd. Francisco Scarano was an emeritus professor here that retired, so we had a lot of folks that had been in the university before, and so for us, it was a very beautiful sort of way of creating intergenerational communities.
[Carmen Ibarra] Could you share a bit about the events you have planned for the Spring?
[Jorell Meléndez-Badillo] We are organizing an event with writers from Puerto Rico. We haven’t confirmed them yet, but it’s a roundtable of three people who are prominent writers in Puerto Rico. We’re also launching a mentorship program in late January. That is going to be for graduate students and junior faculty, where they can identify a mentor from UW or beyond. We’re going to have a symposium on April 23rd and 24th with 21 scholars, which will be open to the community as well.
[Aurora Santiago Ortiz] We have the Study Away that starts in the summer. So, in late May and June 12 students will be taking a course about feminist readings of migration, home, and diaspora. They’re going to be doing two weeks here, and then 2 weeks out in Puerto Rico. Next year we’re planning to have a lot of events. We’re going to bring in folks from other universities, other spaces, and artists, so there’s going to be such a rich tapestry of programming and of opportunities for participation.
[Carmen Ibarra] Where can students go to get more information about these events?
[Jorell Meléndez-Badillo] Right now, we are working on our website, but we have an Instagram page, @prstudieshub, and that’s the best way to keep track of all the things we’re doing. We also have a listserv, and if people want to join, they can send us an email at prstudies.hub@wisc.edu.
[Carmen Ibarra] What do you see as the future of the Puerto Rican Studies Hub? What are your hopes for the Hub?
[Aurora Santiago Ortiz] We want to foster the expansion of Puerto Rican studies, so we really are interested in recruiting more students to UW-Madison that are interested in doing the work in Puerto Rican Studies and hopefully having more faculty that do work in Puerto Rican studies in the future.
[Jorell Meléndez-Badillo] This grant is a 3-year grant, but we hope to renew, because we really think that it’s an important project to keep expanding the field of Puerto Rican studies. The reception has really told us that there was a real need and a real desire for a project like this. While we are focusing on the field of Puerto Rican studies, it’s not solely for Puerto Rican study scholars, as I think that Puerto Rico could be a lens to study so many things. I think that looking forward, the important thing is to continue fostering and expanding the field. And putting UW-Madison at the forefront of that expansion as well.
