Who We Are
Meet the Founding and Executive Director: Michelle Stephens
Michelle Stephens joined the Department of English and the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University–New Brunswick in spring 2011. She is a psychoanalyst and served as the dean of the humanities in the School of Arts and Sciences from 2017–2020. Originally from Jamaica, West Indies, she graduated from Yale University with a Ph.D. in American studies. She is the author of Black Empire: The Masculine Global Imaginary of Caribbean Intellectuals in the United States, 1914 to 1962 (Duke University Press, 2005) and Skin Acts: Race, Psychoanalysis and The Black Male Performer (Duke University Press, 2014). She has published numerous articles on the intersection of race and psychoanalysis in such journals as JAPA, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society. She has also coedited three recent collections in archipelagic studies: Archipelagic American Studies with Brian Russell Roberts (Duke, 2017); Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago with Tatiana Flores (Duke, 2017); and Contemporary Archipelagic Thinking with Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020). She was a founding series coeditor of Rutgers University Press's Critical Caribbean Studies book series and sits on the editorial advisory board of Rowman and Littlefield's Rethinking the Island book series.
Board of Directors
Reporting to the founding executive director, the board of campus directors is composed of faculty members from the different Rutgers campuses who lead and oversee the implementation of the institute's mission at the local level. Directors also cultivate and shape university-wide programs of excellence that are humanities-driven and involve a multidisciplinary collection of scholars whose work addresses racism and social inequality.
Carlos Decena: Institute Acting Director, and Cross-Campus Director of Undergraduate Intellectual Life
Professor, Latino and Caribbean Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University–New Brunswick
Carlos Ulises Decena joined the Departments of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in 2005. He is an interdisciplinary scholar of immigration and queer studies, and his research explores the meeting points of Black, ethnic, and area studies. A native of the Dominican Republic, Decena holds a Ph.D. in American studies from New York University. Decena is the author of two books: Tacit Subjects: Belonging and Same-Sex Desire among Dominican Immigrant Men (2011) and Circuits of the Sacred: A Faggotology in the Black Latinx Caribbean (2023), both published by Duke University Press.
Mayte Green-Mercado: Institute Director, Rutgers University—Newark
Associate Professor, History, Rutgers University–Newark.
Mayte Green-Mercado received her BA in European History from the University of Puerto Rico, and her PhD from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at The University of Chicago, specializing in Islamic Studies. Before coming to Rutgers, she was Assistant Professor of Mediterranean Studies in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. She is the director of the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Minor in the History Department. She teaches courses on Islamic Civilization, Islamic history in Spain and North Africa, and early modern Mediterranean history. Her courses deal with questions of religion, politics, identity, and race and ethnicity in the medieval and early modern periods.
Her current book project is concerned with histories of displacement, migration, and refugees in the early modern Mediterranean.
Patrick Rosal: Institute Director, Rutgers University–Camden
Professor of Creative Writing
Patrick Rosal joined the faculty of the Department of English and Communication at Rutgers University–Camden in 2011. He holds an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. In 2018, he was named a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow.
Finance and Administration
The senior director of finance and administration is the institute’s chief nonacademic officer, responsible for finance, administration, sponsored research administration, human resources, information technology, financial and strategic planning, and administrative support for the institute offices. The position provides universitywide leadership in strategic operational and financial planning and management in support of institute academic, research, and business goals.
Jennifer Leon: Senior Director of Finance and Administration
Jennifer Leon started her career at the Office of Continuing Professional Education at Rutgers University in 1991. She is a Rutgers College graduate with a degree in visual arts who also completed a master’s degree in adult and continuing education from Rutgers’ Graduate School of Education. After moving on from her first position at the university, she has held the positions of program development administrator at the Center for Mathematics, Science, and Computer Education; associate dean for finance and administration at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology; and most recently, director of administration for the humanities at the School of Arts and Sciences.
Staffing Team
Eadie Wilson-Beeler
Robin Yarborough
Tania Bentley
Dolores Turchi
Jesse Bayker
Kaitlyn Rich
Dario Maya
Perla Cordero Mariano
Celebrating Our Team Over the Years!
