Black and Latino Studies Faculty

Email: Shelly.Eversley@baruch.cuny.edu

Dr. Shelly Eversley is Professor of English and Interim Chair of the Black and Latino Studies department at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY), where she designed the Bachelor of Arts in Black and Latino Studies. She is also Professor of English at The Graduate Center (CUNY), and Co-Director of the Futures Initiative. Her recent institutional leadership includes her role as Faculty Co-Director of the Mellon Foundation’s Transformative Learning in the Humanities initiative at CUNY and Academic Director of CUNY’s Faculty Fellowship Publication Program. She is the author of The “Real” Negro:  The Question of Authenticity in Twentieth Century African American Literature (Routledge, 2004) as well as several essays on literature, race, and culture.  Her editorial work includes The Sexual Body and The 1970s, both special issues of WSQ, a journal by the Feminist Press, as well as the recent book African American Literature in Transition, 1960-1970: Black Art, Politics, and Aesthetics (Cambridge, 2022).  She is currently revising a new book on Black survival in height of cold war surveillance and censorship. She teaches literature, feminism, and Black Studies.

Dr. Keisha Allan is an assistant professor in the Department of Black & Latinx Studies at Baruch College. Her research focuses on twentieth-century Caribbean literature. Within this field, she examines Caribbean literature by women writers who critique social and political inequities in their societies. She examines how selected female authors from the Caribbean create fictional worlds that have the effect of subverting patriarchal perspectives and paradigms in their postcolonial societies. She interrogates society and artistic responsibility, with women presented as creatively engaged in revolutionary activities aimed at reshaping ideas and perspectives in the national imaginary. She has published sections of her research in peer-reviewed journals such as The Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy and The Fight & The Fiddle of the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University. Her current research project examines how Caribbean women writers propose alternative conceptions of marronage by foregrounding the freedom making tactics of women in post-colonial societies shaped variously by French, Spanish and British colonialism.

As an advocate for community building, Dr. Allan has worked with community organizations founded by Anglophone Caribbean people who work with Caribbean and Central American students to expand knowledge by considering how issues of diversity and inclusion are discussed in various parts of the Caribbean and Latin America. In coordination with local community organizations, she has created avenues for productive global outreach to Caribbean and Latin American communities.

Karanja Keita Carroll, Ph.D. is currently a member of the Department of Black & Latinx Studies at Baruch College (CUNY). His teaching and research interests revolve around African-centered theory & methodology, with an emphasis on social and psychological theory. As an advocate of Prison Education, Dr. Carroll has also taught, held workshops and/or lectured in SCI-Chester, Shawangunk (NYSDOC), Sullivan (NYDOC) and Brookwood Secure Center (NYSDJJOY). His publications have appeared in the Journal of Pan African Studies, Western Journal of Black Studies, Journal of the International Society of Teacher Education, Critical Sociology and Race, Gender & Class; he also has articles and chapters in numerous edited volumes. Dr. Carroll is an African-centered social theorist who is thoroughly committed to the African-centered imperative, one that is grounded in the creation and utilization of culturally-specific frameworks in order to understand and create solutions for humanity.  Dr. Carroll is also an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, North East Political Prisoner Coalition and Black Alliance for Peace.  Dr. Carroll is fundamentally committed to “academic excellence and social responsibility” as originally articulated by the National Council for Black Studies.

Dr. Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana (she/her/hers/ella/ellas) is an Assistant Professor in Chicano/a/x Studies in the Black and Latino Studies (BLS) Department at Baruch College. She is a cultural worker and interdisciplinary qualitative Latinx public scholar who studies contemporary migration processes. Her current research project focuses on childhood arrival migrants to the United States. Her academic craft centers Indigenous and feminist pedagogies and methodologies to acknowledge different forms of accessible, reciprocal knowledge-making responsive to community needs. Lizbeth holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, specializing in Latin American Literature and Cultures and a designated emphasis on Human Rights.

Email: Tshombe.Miles@baruch.cuny.edu

Tshombe Miles is an Associate Professor of Black and Latino Studies. He teaches the history of race, class, and ethnicity in Latin America, specifically Brazil. His work is particularly interested in the black diaspora in the Atlantic World. He is a member of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora and Associação Nacional de História (The National Association of History (in Brazil). Prof. Miles has presented papers at the University of Texas Austin, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, New York University, and invited to the City College and presented papers at conferences in France, Italy, Spain, and has regularly presented in Brazil. Professor Miles has published two books and several articles. Also, he has written articles for popular online outlets like the Root, and the African-American Intellectual Society. He has also written several opinion pieces for the newspaper O Povo, a popular newspaper from the northeast of Brazil. He earned a BA from City College of New York and held a Ph.D. from Brown University.

Books:

Miles, T. (2019). Race and Afro-Brazilian Agency in Brazil. Routledge/Taylor Francis. https://www.crcpress.com/Race-and-Afro-Brazilian-Agency-in-Brazil/Miles/p/book/9781138607248

Miles, T. (2012). A luta contra a escravatura e o racismo no Ceará (The Fight Against Slavery and Racism in Ceará). Fortaleza, Ceará: Demócrito Rocha. ISBN: 9788575295403

Articles and chapters in books

Miles, T. L. (2019). “From Invisibility to Visibility: The Afro-Brazilian Struggle in Ceará” In Alejandro Velasco (Ed.). New York, NY: NACLA Report on the Americas/The North American Congress on Latin America is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization. https://nacla.org/

Miles, T. (2019). In Lawrence Aje (Ed.), Reconstructing A Dismantled Past: The Case of Afro-diasporic History in Ceará, Brazil. Routledge Press/Taylor Francis.

Miles, T. ( 2018). “Reflecting on the Legacy of Brazilian Slavery and Reimaging Afro-Brazilian Agency.” To appear in History Compass (John Wiley & Sons). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14780542

Miles, T. (2017). Abdias Nascimento e a Tradição Intelectual Afrodiaspórica: no combate ao racismo (Combatting Racism: Abdias do Nascimento and the Afro-Diasporic Tradition). Revista de Ciencias Sociais (from the Department of Social Science and Graduate Program in Sociology of the Federal University of Ceará), Vol. 48, (Nº. 2, 2017), 106-136. ISSN 2318-4620. http://www.periodicos.ufc.br/revcienso/article/view/19496 

Miles, T. (2013). O Escolhido: Dragão do Mar. (The Chosen One: Dragão do Mar) Cadernos de Estudos e Pesquisas do Sertão, Quixada, Ceará V.1 (N.1). 51-60. ISSN 2446-4872. http://seer.uece.br/?journal=cadernospesquisadosertao&page=issue&op=view&path%5B%5D=80

Miles, T. (2013). “Black Leadership and their Idea of Freedom” (Republished). In fassil demissie (Ed.), African Diaspora in Brazil: History, Culture, and Politics, 114-142. ISBN 0415824818 Routledge Press/Taylor and Francis. www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415824811

Miles, T. (2012). “Black Leadership and their Idea of Freedom.” African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal (Routledge Press/Taylor and Francis), Volume 5 (Issue 2), 264-282. ISSN 1752-8631. https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rabd20

OTHER PUBLICATIONS:

Miles, T. (2016). 10 Things Afro-Brazilians Want You to Know In Danielle Belton (Ed.). The Root. www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/08/10-things-afro-brazilians-want-you-to-know

Miles, T. (2016). D.J. Marky entry in Dictionary of the Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography. In Henry Louis Gates and Franklin Knight (Ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780199935796

Miles, T. (2016). Dragão do Mar entry in Dictionary of the Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography In Henry Louis Gates and Franklin Knight (Ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780199935796

Miles, T. (2016). Jorge Ben Jor entry in Dictionary of the Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography. In Henry Louis Gates and Franklin Knight (Ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780199935796

Miles, T. (2016). Reflections on Race Diaspora and Nation In Keisha Blain (Ed.). New York, New York: African American Intellectual Historical Society. www.aaihs.org/reflections-on-race-diaspora-and-nation

Miles, T. (2014). “130 Years of the Abolition of Slavery” (130 anos da abolição da escravatura no Ceará). Fortaleza, Ceará: O Povo.

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Dr. Rojo Robles is a Puerto Rican writer, filmmaker, and scholar specializing in Latin American, Latinx, and Afro-diasporic literature, cinema, and culture. He holds degrees in Theater (BA), Comparative Literature (MA), and Latin American and Latinx cultures (MPhil; Ph.D.) and is an Assistant Professor at the Black and Latinx Studies Department at Baruch College, CUNY. As a scholar, Dr. Robles has published articles in various journals like SX Salon| Small Axe Project, Voces del Caribe, the Puerto Rico Review, Taller Electric Marronage, Revista Cruce, Revista Iberoamericana, and Transmodernity. Currently, he is working on a book and a series of articles exploring Afro-Diasporican maroon poetics and cinegraphic literature. He co-hosts the Latinx Visions podcast and is the co-director of the Black Studies Colloquium.

Dr. Rebecca L. Salois is a full-time Lecturer in the Black and Latino Studies Department at Baruch College, CUNY where she teaches Latin American and Latine literature and pop-culture. She earned her B.A. and M.A. from the University of New Hampshire, and her M.Phil and PhD from The Graduate Center, CUNY. Prior to moving to New York in 2010, Dr. Salois taught high school Spanish in New Hampshire. She has instructed courses on campuses throughout NYC. In 2012, she began teaching at Baruch and in 2020, she joined the Black and Latino Studies Department.

In 2023, Dr. Salois received the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences Award for Excellence in Teaching for Part-Time Faculty. During the 2021-2022 academic year she was chosen as an Andrew W. Mellon Transformative Learning in the Humanities Fellow. As part of this fellowship, she explored and implemented practices of “ungrading,” which allow for more inclusive and student-centric approaches to learning. She is open to new and innovative pedagogical approaches including self-grading, co-creation and designing of syllabi, and alternative student projects.

Her research interests range from Latin American and Caribbean theater to US Latinx identity representation in pop-culture. Her work has been published in Journal of Interdisciplinary Humanities, Hispanic Studies Review, Cuban Studies, and Words without Borders. She has presented and hosted several academic panels, including one at New York Comic Con. Dr. Salois is the former host of the Why Do We Read This? podcast and currently co-hosts Latinx Visions with Baruch Colleague Dr. Rojo Robles.