Yarimar Bonilla
Professor, American Studies
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Yarimar Bonilla is a Professor of American Studies at Princeton University. She is a political anthropologist, professor, and contributing writer for the New York Times. Both an accomplished scholar and a prominent public intellectual, Dr Bonilla teaches and writes broadly across disciplines and fields on questions of race, citizenship, empire, and the entanglements of postcolonial sovereignty. She is the author and editor of several books, including Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment, Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm, and Trouillot Remixed: The Michel Rolph Trouillot Reader.
In addition to her publications, Dr Bonilla has produced several documentaries including Aftershocks of Disaster: the Film and the Emmy-nominated documentary series Puerto Rican Voices. She was also a contributor to the first season of the award-winning podcast series La Brega with her audio ethnography of Puerto Rico’s colonial crisis, a founder of the public humanities project Puerto Rico Syllabus, a former editor of Public Anthropologies for American Anthropologist, and a former Director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College.
Bonilla is currently working on several new book projects. The Coloniality of Disaster is an ethnographic examination of the politics of recovery in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and the forms of political and social trauma that the storm revealed, An Unthinkable State, examines the Puerto Rican statehood movement for what it reveals about the nature and contradictions of the US Empire. Lastly, the collection Thinking with Bad Bunny brings together scholars, musicians, and journalists to reflect on the future of Puerto Rico through the lens of reggaeton.
During the 2023-2024 academic year Dr. Bonilla is on sabbatical while serving as convener for the interdisciplinary project Bridging the Divides.
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