Date: September 25, 2025
Time: 6pm-7pm
Cost: FREE!
Registration Required? YES! Register HERE!
Location: Virtual via Zoom
Join us for DFM’s Talking About Race Matters virtual lecture series with Dr. Yalidy Matos, Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, as she presents her newest research, Living Afro-Latina Lives: An Afrodiasporic Feminist Approach to Understanding Political Consciousness.
Living Afro-Latina Lives: An Afrodiasporic Feminist Approach to Understanding Political Consciousness explores how Afro-Latinas— whether born in the U.S. or abroad but primarily residing in the United States—identify and construct their identities, and how they engage with broader identity categories. Crucially, the work traces the shift from individual identification to the development of an intersectional Afro-Latina political consciousness. This consciousness isn’t just about how they see themselves—it’s about how they act, what they believe, and how they engage politically. Rooted in Black feminist thought, this intersectional Afro-Latina political consciousness has real consequences for political attitudes and behavior. This works examines how identity becomes action, and how Afro-Latina lives illuminate the power of lived experience in shaping political life.
Yalidy Matos is Associate Professor of political science at Rutgers University – New Brunswick. Her scholarship sits at the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, and politics, immigration, and identity politics. Her book Moral and Immoral Whiteness in Immigration Politics (OUP) was published in 2023. She graduated from Ohio State University in Columbus, OH with a PhD in Political Science in 2015, and Connecticut College in New London, CT with a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Gender and Women’s Studies in 2009.
Talking About Race Matters is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and made possible by The Cowles Charitable Trust and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.