Core Faculty

Education

Ph.D. University of Michigan, History
M.A. Cornell University, Asian Studies
B.A. University of Virginia, History

Research Interests

Latin American and Caribbean History, Asians in Latin America and the Caribbean, Race and Ethnicity in the Americas, Diaspora and International Migration, Latinx History, Public Humanities

Biographical Information

Professor López is an Associate Professor in the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies and the Department of History. She specializes in the historical intersections between Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. Her book Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History examines Chinese migrants in Cuba from the mid-nineteenth century to the present through archival and ethnographic research in Cuba, China, and the United States and received the 2014 Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Prize of the Caribbean Studies Association. She is currently working on two projects, one on Chinese migrants, gender, and citizenship across Caribbean societies in the twentieth century (with a focus on Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago) and the other on the diversity of the Cuban diaspora in the United States (including Chinese Cubans). Professor López is Co-Director of the Rutgers Latino Studies Research Initiative and is collaborating on the recovery of the history of Latinx people and organizations at the university and in New Jersey. She is involved with the SAS Global Asias Initiative, the Advanced Institute for Critical Caribbean Studies, and the Center for Latin American Studies. She was a Faculty Fellow for the 2015-2016 Center for Cultural Analysis Archipelagoes Seminar. She is also an editor of two book series: Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, with Ignacio López-Calvo (Palgrave Macmillan) and Critical Caribbean Studies, with Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel and Carter Mathes (Rutgers University Press). 

Courses Regularly Taught

Publications

Book

• 2013. Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 

Articles

• 2019. "Asian Dimensions of Caribbean Latina/o Identity and Cultural Production." In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Oxford University Press.
• 2018. “Fried Rice and Plátanos.” In ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America, 2018. Latin America and Asia.
• 2009. "The Revitalization of Havana's Chinatown: Invoking Chinese Cuban History." Journal of Chinese Overseas. 5(1): 177-200.
• 2008. "Afro-Asian Alliances: Marriage, Godparentage, and Social Status in Late-Nineteenth- Century Cuba." Afro-Hispanic Review. 27(1): 59-72.
• 2007. Co-authored with Rebekah E. Pite. "Letters from Soledad in the Atkins Family Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society." The Massachusetts Historical Review. 9: 35-54.

Special Journal Issue

• 2008. Guest Editor with Evelyn Hu-DeHart. Special Issue on "Afro-Asia," Afro-Hispanic Review 27(1). Introduction, "Asian Diasporas in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Historical Overview." 9-21.

Book Chapters

• 2025. “From Puerto Rican to Latino Studies at Rutgers University: Fifty Years of Student Activism.” In Latinas/os in New Jersey: Histories, Communities, and Cultures. Edited by Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago and Ulla D. Berg. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
• 2019. “Gatekeeping in the Tropics: U.S. Immigration Policy and the Caribbean Connection,” In A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered: U.S. Society in an Age of Restriction, 1924-1965. Edited by Maddalena Marinari, Madeline Y. Hsu, and Maria Cristina Garcia, 45-64. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
• 2018. Section introductions to Afro-Asian Connections in Latin America and the Caribbean. Edited by Luisa Ossa and Debbie Lee-DiStefano. Lexington Books, 2018.
• 2016. Section introductions to Imagining Asia in the Americas. Edited by Zelideth María Rivas and Debbie Lee-DiStefano. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016. Part I “Moving Past Encounters: People of Asian Descent in the Americas” 9-12; Part II “Historicities” 83-84; Part III “Lives/Representations” 133-34.
• 2016. “Remesas y retornos: la importancia de la migración a Cuba para los pueblos cantoneses” [Remittances and Return: The Significance of Migration to Cuba for Cantonese Villages]. In Huellas de China en este lado del Atlántico [Footprints from China on this Side of the Atlantic]. Edited by Mitzi Espinosa Luis, 172-80. La Habana: Editorial José Martí.
• 2016. “The Asian Presence in Mestizo Nations: A Response.” In Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American Thought: Historical and Institutional Trajectories. Edited by Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui, and Marisa Belausteguigoitia, 125-31. Palgrave-Macmillan. Response to José F. Buscaglia’s essay “Race and the Constitutive Inequality of the Modern Condition.” [Spanish edition Boston: Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, 2018]
• 2014. “In Search of Legitimacy: Chinese Immigrants and Latin American Nation Building.” In Immigration and National Identities in Latin America 1850-1950. Edited by Nicola Foote and Michael Goebel, 182-204. Gainesville: The University Press of Florida.
• 2013. "Renace el sueño: Remaking Havana's Barrio Chino." In Orientalism and Identity in Latin America: Fashioning Self and Others from the (Post)Colonial Margin. Edited by Erik Camayd-Freixas, 160-73. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.
• 2007. "Transnational Histories: A Dual-Sided Approach to Researching Early-Twentieth- Century Chinese Migration to Cuba." In Chinese Overseas: Migration, Research and Documentation. Edited by Tan Chee-Beng, Colin Storey, and Julia Zimmerman, 167-198. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.
• 2006. "The Chinese in Cuban History." In Essays on the Chinese Diaspora in the Caribbean. Edited by Walton Look Lai, 105-29. Trinidad & Tobago: History Department, University of the West Indies.
• 2004. "'One Brings Another': The Formation of Early-Twentieth-Century Chinese Migrant Communities in Cuba." In The Chinese in the Caribbean. Edited by Andrew R. Wilson, 93-127. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers.

Public History 

• New Jersey Historical Commission and Revolution NJ Professional Development Webinar Series: "Movement of People" (2022)
• Rutgers Latino and Caribbean Memory Project

Other Media

• Yvette Montoya, “The History of Chinese Migration to Cuba — and Why We All Need to Know It” (popsugar.com, July 19, 2023)
• Ameena Gafoor Institute for the Study of Indentureship and its Legacies Oral History Project, Director Arlen Harris (July 11, 2021)
• Chinese American Museum of Los Angeles, An Untold Past: Chinese in the Caribbean (February 2, 2021)
• C-Span, U.S. Immigration, 1920s to the 1960s, Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting (April 22, 2019)
• Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History, New Books Network (November 21, 2014)
• Carrie Stetler, “As Chinese-Cuban Population Dwindles, Traditions Die” Rutgers Today (October 18, 2013)
• Will Weissert, “In Havana’s Chinatown, Rare Droplets of Freedom” Associated Press (July 12, 2010)
• Lydia Lum, “The Hybridization of Ethnic Studies” Diverse: Issues in Higher Education (September 18, 2008)