Core Faculty

Omaris Z. Zamora is a transnational Black Dominican Studies scholar and spoken-word poet. Her research interests include: theorizing AfroLatinidad in the context of race, gender, sexuality through Afro-diasporic approaches. Her current book project tentatively titled, Cigüapa Unbound: AfroLatina Feminist Epistemologies of Tranceformation examines the transnational Black Dominican narratives put forth in the work of Firelei Baez, Elizabeth Acevedo, Nelly Rosario, Ana Lara, Loida Maritza Pérez, Josefina Baez, Cardi B, and La Bella Chanel. Zamora pays close attention to how they embody their blackness, produce knowledge, and shift the geographies of black feminism in ways that recognize the legacies of Chicana/Latina and Black American feminist theory in the United States, but tends to the specific experiences of AfroLatina women and their multiple genealogies. The manuscript proposes “tranceformation” as a continuous process that engages with the spiritual aspect of self-making and centers the body as an archive that creates and transmits an AfroLatina feminist epistemological theory. Her work has been published in Post45, Latinx Talk, Label Me Latina/o, among others and has been featured on NPR’s Alt.Latino podcast. She fuses her poetry with her scholarly work as a way of contributing to a black poetic approach to literature and cultural studies.