Mayra Rivera is Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies at Harvard University. She works at the intersections between critical theory, literature, and theories of coloniality, race and gender—with particular attention to Caribbean postcolonial thought. Her research explores the relationship between discursive and material dimensions in shaping human embodiment. Her publications include, The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (2007) and the co-edited volumes, Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology (2010) and Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (2004). Her most recent book, Poetics of the Flesh (2015), analyzes theological, philosophical, and political descriptions of “flesh” as metaphors for understanding how social discourses materialize in human bodies. Mayra is currently developing a project that explores narratives of catastrophe in twentieth-century Caribbean writing.
Lectures:
“A Procession of Catastrophes: Coloniality and Ecology from the Caribbean”