Real name:
Biography:
Patricia Silver (silver_patricia@yahoo.com) is a Research Scholar with Ronin Institute. She has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from American University in Washington, D.C. In 2005, she moved to Orlando from Puerto Rico for a visiting faculty position in anthropology at the University of Central Florida, which she held until 2009. While there, she co-directed the oral history project, “Puerto Ricans in Central Florida from 1940s to 1980s: A History.” She also consulted on an oral history project in April 2012, “Cultural Foundations of Puerto Rican Orlando,” and directed a third project in November 2012, “Puerto Rican Political Participation and Civic Engagement.” She served as co-editor of the spring 2010 special issue on Puerto Ricans in Central Florida from CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. Her publications have appeared in American Ethnologist, Identities, CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Southern Cultures, Latino Studies, and Memory Studies. Her book, Sunbelt Disapora: Race, Class, and Latino Politics in Puerto Rican Orlando was published by the University of Texas Press in 2020 (https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/silver-sunbelt-diaspora).
Current research areas:
Puerto Rican and Latinx Studies
Political community formation
Race, class, and place in US communities
Recent scholarly activity:
My most recent project included 10 years of ethnographic, oral history, and archival research in Orlando, Florida, which has become the new center of the Puerto Rican diaspora. Sunbelt Diaspora: Race, Class, and Latino Politics in Puerto Rican Orlando (UT Press, 2020) examines the challenges to and strategies for Latino, and especially Puerto Rican, political community formation in Orlando, where a historic black-white racial landscape and post–1960s claims to “color-blindness” combine with neoliberal political-economic ideologies that celebrate individual achievement in an emerging multiculturalism. In 2014, I served as expert in a lawsuit charging Orange County, Florida, with violating Latino voting rights during redistricting. Data from the deposition and trial provide a unique opportunity for detailing the play of place and politics in strategies for Latino containment and struggles for Latino empowerment in this Sunbelt city.
Recent publications:
2020 Sunbelt Diaspora: Race, Class, and Latino Politics in Puerto Rican Orlando. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Peer-Reviewed articles
2021 "'Asking as a Citizen': Navigating Ambiguity in the Interests of Community." The Latin Americanist, Volume 65, Number 1, March 2021, pp. 123-141.
2020 "Race, Place, and Latinx Political Choices." Anthropology News website, November 9, 2020. DOI: 10.14506/AN.1531.
2017 "'Let's Go Check Out Florida': Rethinking Puerto Rican Diaspora." With William Vélez. CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. 29(3).
2017 “Sunshine Politics: Puerto Rican Memory and the Political in New Destinations.” CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. 29(2):4-37.
2016 "'You Don't Look Puerto Rican': Collective Memory and Community in Orlando." Memory Studies. 9(4):405-421. Published online before print September 3, 2015, DOI: 10.1177/1750698015601179.
2015 “Remembering Abuela: Memory, Authenticity, and Place in Puerto Rican Orlando.” Latino Studies 13(3):376-401.
2013 “Latinization, Race, and Cultural Identification in Puerto Rican Orlando.” Southern Cultures 19(4):55-75.
Book chapters
2014 “Puerto Ricans in Florida.” In Puerto Ricans at the Dawn of the New Millennium. Edwin Meléndez and Carlos Vargas Ramos, eds., pp. 62-81. New York: CENTRO.
2014 “New Puerto Rican Diasporas in the Southern United States.” In Puerto Ricans at the Dawn of the New Millennium. Edwin Meléndez and Carlos Vargas Ramos, eds., pp. 82-97. New York: CENTRO.
2013 “Local and Translocal Belonging: The Comparative Case Study of a Puerto Rican Archive.” In Identity Palimpsests: Ethnic Archiving in the U.S. and Canada. Dominique Daniel and Amalia S. Levi, eds., pp. 159-170. Los Angeles: Litwin Book, LLC.
Book Reviews
2021 Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid, William D. Lopez. American Ethnologist 48(1):128-129. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12998
2016 Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism, and U.S. Colonialism in Puerto Rico, Isar P. Godreau, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology2015 Asian Americans in Dixie: Race and Migration in the South, Joshi, Khyati Y., and Jigna Desai, eds. H-Net
2015 Asian Americans in Dixie: Race and Migration in the South, Joshi, Khyati Y., and Jigna Desai, eds. H-Net
2014 Making a Life in Multiethnic Miami: Immigration & the Rise of a Global City, Elizabeth M. Aranda, Sallie Hughes & Elena Sabogal. CentroVoices http://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/centrovoices/reviews/global-miami-life-city
2011 Land Reform in Puerto Rico: Modernizing the Colonial State, 1941-1969, Ismael García Colón. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 16(2):1-3.