Chair of Harvard’s Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights shares vision for program
A professor of religion and Latinx studies and of Romance languages and literatures, Mayra Rivera draws on her cross-disciplinary background in her role as faculty chair of the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights (EMR), the interdepartmental program that focuses on the group’s title categories, paying particular attention to Asian American, Latinx, and Native American studies. Rivera took that chair last fall. We asked her about her vision for EMR’s evolving role on campus, and how her work with the committee connects to her own fields of study. Q&A Mayra Rivera GAZETTE: Much of your work is in the field of religion and theology. Is there a connecting path between that background and your role as chair of EMR? RIVERA: I explore how religious ideas exist alongside cultural ideas, how they are informed by culture and, in turn, inform culture. My specific focus has been the relationship between religion, race, and colonialism. In my early work,...