HTI Alumni
Mayra Rivera
Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies, Harvard University
Field(s) of Study: Theology and Systematic Theology
Mayra Rivera is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies at Harvard University. Rivera’s works at the intersections between philosophy of religion, literature, and theories of coloniality, race and gender—with particular attention to Caribbean thought. Her most recent book, Poetics of the Flesh (2015), analyzes theological, philosophical, and political descriptions of “flesh” as metaphors for understanding how social discourses materialize in human bodies. She is also author of The Touch of Transcendence (2007) and of Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology (2010) and of Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (2004). Rivera is currently working on a project that explores narratives of catastrophe in Caribbean thought.