Andrea Morales Loucil

Andrea Morales Loucil

I am a cultural historian and literary scholar from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, focusing on nation-building movements, race-making processes, and revolutionary poetics of the Caribbean. In 2020, I received my B.A. in History from Temple University after transferring from the University of Puerto Rico: Mayagüez. During my studies, I became interested in how literature shaped cultural narratives of nationality and its ability to capture the aura of revolution in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico. My Master’s thesis at the Miami University of Ohio was completed in 2022 and explored mixed-race Creoles’ navigations of the Spanish Caribbean’s racial politics. I am currently a Gates-Cambridge scholar at King’s College researching how Puerto Ricans of African descent used poetry to contest anti-Black cultural narratives, forged transnational bonds of Afro-diasporic solidarity, and pursued Cuban and Puerto Rican independence.

My research interests include transnational histories, pan-Caribbean literary movements, and the poetics of dissent. I emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary methodologies and the digital humanities in my work, which allows me to paint a broader picture of the Caribbean’s kaleidoscopic interpretations of race. My work has been presented at the University of Massachusetts: Amherst, American Historians Association, and Northeastern Modern Languages Association