Melinda González
Assistant Professor
Dr. Melinda González is a Puerto Rican scholar and poet, who was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, with ancestral home in the lush mountains of Moca, Puerto Rico. She is a socio-cultural anthropologist who focuses on environmental anthropology/disaster studies. Her work maps how disaster impacts are differentially distributed across race, class, and gender. Dr. González uses decolonial and indigenous research methods to study new media technologies in environmental justice research.
Her forthcoming book manuscript examines displacement and the lived experiences of survivors of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and New York and how they used digital space, poetry, and community organizing in long-term disaster recovery. Dr. González's next project, tentatively titled "Wade in the Water," aims to shed light on racial disparities within ongoing environmental and water crises in urban centers of the Northeastern United States.
She has taught courses at Rutgers University, Oregon State University, Brooklyn College – CUNY, William Paterson University, and Union County College. She has given talks and workshops at Wheaton College (Mass.), Bethlehem Public Library (PA), the University of North Texas, Brooklyn Arts Council, Lehman College, University of Idaho, and DePaul University.
Dr. González facilitates creative writing and academic workshops to help poets, writers, and academics to maintain their authentic voice as they journey through their academic careers. Her poetry and writing have been featured in Barzakh Magazine, Defunkt Magazine, the journal of Feminist Anthropology, West Trade Review, La Libreta Online Literary Journal, Variant Literature, Inc., Funicular Magazine, Yes Magazine, and many others. She is currently working on her first press-released poetry manuscript; and has self-published two poetry anthologies. She is a recipient of 2022 Words of Resistance and Restoration Poetry Fellowship from Roots. Wounds. Words. (RWW) and the 2021 Muslim Storytellers Fellowship from The Highlights Foundation.
Dr. González holds a BA from Barnard College, an MA from Rutgers University, and a PhD in Anthropology & Geography with a minor concentration in English Literature from Louisiana State University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Rutgers University's Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Culture and Politics major at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.