overview

• Isar Pilar Godreau is a graduate of the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, where she obtained a bachelor's degree in sociology. She holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of California at Santa Cruz (1999). She has taught at Texas University in Austin, the University of Iowa, Brandeis University, and the University of Puerto Rico. For eight years (2003-2011) she served as Director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research of the UPR in Cayey. Currently, she works as a researcher for projects sponsored by the federal agency NIH. Her research interests revolve around the issue of racial identity and racism in the Caribbean with an emphasis on Puerto Rico. She has published several articles on the folklorization of blackness, hair as a sign of racial identity, the use of racial terms in the census, and racism at school, among other topics. She is the author of two books: “Uprooting Myths: Guide for an anti-racist teaching of African heritage in Puerto Rico” (Editorial Educator Emergent 2013) and “Scripts of Blackness: Cultural Nationalism and US Colonialism in Puerto Rico” (University of Illinois Press 2015) awarded by the Association of Puerto Rican Studies in 2016.