Karen Jaime 2022 Mellon Fellow

Karen Jaime is Assistant Professor of Performing and Media Arts and Latina/o Studies at Cornell University. Karen is a former Career Enhancement Junior Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation), Visiting Scholar at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellow, and Chancellor’s Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Karen’s monograph, The Queer Nuyorican: Racialized Sexualities and Aesthetics in Loisaida (NYU Press, 2021) argues for a reexamination of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe as a historically queer space, both in terms of sexualities and performance practices. Her critical writing has been published, or is forthcoming, in Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, e-misférica, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, ASAP/J, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, and Performance Matters. Jaime is also an accomplished spoken word/performance artist who served as the host/curator of the Friday Night Poetry Slam at the world-renowned Nuyorican Poets Cafe (2003-2005). As a published poet, her writing is included in The Best of Panic! En Vivo From the East Village, Flicker and Spark: A Queer Anthology of Spoken Word and Poetry, a special issue of Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary and Art Journal, “Out Latina Lesbians,” and in the anthology Latinas: Struggles and Protest in 21st Century USA. During her residency, she will lead Institute programming on the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Founders Collection in HIDVL and present new research on the impact of HIV/AIDS on the Café community.

Land Acknowledgement

The Hemispheric Institute at New York University acknowledges with respect the Lenape nation, whose traditional homelands NYU now occupies. We recognize the longstanding significance of these territories for Lenape nations past and present. We acknowledge that we work in a city with the largest urban Native population in the United States. Even as we work to increase the historical awareness of Indigenous exclusion and erasure, we acknowledge the effect of that legacy in educational institutions, at NYU, and across the hemisphere. We are committed to work revealing Indigenous history and life-worlds and to the inclusion of Indigenous voices and participation, in allyship with Indigenous makers and communities across the Americas.

About Us

The Hemispheric Institute gathers artists, scholars, writers, learners, and activists from across the Americas. We focus on social justice and research politically engaged culture and performance. We share this work in digital archives and amplify it through dialogues and public scholarship, residencies, publications, and gatherings. Our dynamic, multilingual network traverses disciplines and borders and is grounded in the fundamental belief that artistic practice and critical reflection can spark lasting cultural change.