Ricia Chansky

I work on storytelling for social justice projects both across the Puerto Rican archipelago and in translocal and global climate justice communities.
University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez
https://www.uprm.edu/ohl
Ricia Anne Chansky is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and the Director of the Oral History Lab @UPRM where she leads projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. She is a Fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE) at Columbia University, the codirector of the Archivo de Respuestas Emergencias de Puerto Rico, and the Senior Climate Justice Fellow at the Humanities Action Lab at Rutgers-Newark. Her recent books are The Divided States: Unraveling National Identity in the Twenty-First Century; Mi Mari­a: Surviving the Storm, Voices from Puerto Rico; and Maxy Survives the Hurricane / Maxy sobrevive el huracan.

Experience

I have been working in storytelling for social justice since hurricanes Irma and Maria made landfall in the Puerto Rican archipelago in rapid succession in 2017. Since that time, I have built an oral history lab dedicated to recording, preserving, and amplifying life stories of creative responses to climate disaster, including the complex sociopolitical networks related to environmental racism and colonial practices that 1. prevent preparedness strategies and sufficient response from being realized and 2. barr members of frontline communities from participating in global discourse on the climate crisis.

Specialty

I believe that oral histories of climatological disaster are essential for resituating survivors of communal trauma as agential beings in the aftermath while recognizing that their eyewitness testimonies contain essential information necessary for mitigating and responding to catastrophe.

Subject Areas

    • Local/Regional Histories:
    • Puerto Rican

    Purpose of Contact

    • I am available to answer questions, or provide mentorship to other oral historians
    • I am available to collaborate - on research, community projects, artistic endeavors, or other joint undertakings with peers
    Contact Ricia Chansky
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