Faculty

Wilson Valentín-Escobar, PhD (he/him/él) is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Public Humanities. A first-generation college graduate who is also a product of New York City's public schools, Valentín is a scholar, professor, curator, and activist who hails from pre-gentrified Brooklyn. The son of a former public school janitor and homemaker, and raised in Brooklyn's Farragut Public Housing Projects by working-class Puerto Rican parents who migrated to New York City, his experiences of discrimination and invisibility shaped his intellectual and scholarly interests, pedagogical philosophy, as well as his commitment to transformative social justice. 

Valentín is the author of two books: Bodega Surrealism: Latina/o/x Artivists in New York City (Fordham University Press, forthcoming) and Rican-Structing the Roots and Routes of Puerto Rican Music and Dance  (Centro Press, forthcoming). He has curated numerous exhibits, including ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York, Montage Quotidien: The Photographs of Máximo Rafael Colón, and Power and Memory: 50 Years of Struggle, Shared Legacies of Resistance, among others. Valentín has also presented at national and international conferences, and has published his scholarship in academic refereed journals, book anthologies, and museum catalogs.  

As an interdisciplinary scholar trained in the Critical Ethnic Studies tradition, he has long been committed to community engaged pedagogy and collaborative, transdisciplinary, public-facing scholarship that fosters praxis-oriented intellectual inquiry. His scholarship and teaching is at the intersections of various fields and subjects, including artivism (arts and activism), US Latinx Studies, Cultural Studies, Museum Studies, Performance Studies, Urban Studies, Historical Studies, Sociology, Aesthetics, and Oral History. He aims to create pathways for aesthetic innovation, arts-based civic engagement, community activism, community-based arts education, and multi/interdisciplinary arts that foster and hold space for socio-political and academic collaborations. Valentín believes that decolonial teaching practices and knowledge production are best realized within spaces of freedom and equity, allowing for creative and imaginative thinking beyond conventional paradigms and disciplines. 

He teaches courses in Community Engagement and Social Action, US Ethnic Studies, Latina/o/x Studies, Puerto Rican Studies, Art and Activism, Oral History Theory and Methods, Self-Directed Learning, and Cultural Studies.

Before joining The New School, Valentín was an Associate Professor of American Studies and Sociology at Hampshire College (2004-2022), Director of the cross-campus Five College Latin, Caribbean and Latina/o/x Studies Program (2011-2018), and Director of the interdisciplinary Bachelor of Liberal Arts Program at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell (2019-2021). 

Valentín is the recipient of various national and international fellowships, grants, and awards, including: a Postdoctoral Associate in the Program in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale University, an Andrew Mellon Fellowship at Columbia University, the George Washington Henderson Fellowship at the University of Vermont, the Fred C. Anderson Fellow in American Studies at Carleton College, the American Sociological Association Presidential Minority Fellowship, and a Periclean Faculty Leadership Program Grant from the Eugene Lang Foundation.

At the University of Michigan, he completed a PhD and MA in American Studies, as well as a MA in Sociology. He completed a Graduate Certificate in Oral History at Columbia University, and a BA in Sociology and Latinx Studies (with honors) at Fordham University. 

PhD, University of Michigan

MA, University of Michigan

MA, University of Michigan

Graduate Certificate, Columbia University

BA, Fordham University

"The Young Lords and Los Gritos de Mañana: Revolutionary Pasts and Futures," in The Young Lords Speak: Building Revolution on the Streets of Chicago, Ed. Jacqueline Lazú. Foreward by José "Cha Cha" Jiménez (Haymarket Press, 2026)

"Artistic Decoloniality as Aesthetic Praxis: Making and Transforming Imaginations and Communities in NYC, in Latinx Art in New York. Eds. Arlene Davila, Yasmin Ramirez, and Nestor David Pastor (Duke University Press, 2025) 

Bodega Surrealism: The Emergence of Latina/o/x Artivists in New York City (Fordham University Press, Forthcoming)

Rican-Structing the Roots and Routes of Puerto Rican Music (Centro Press, Forthcoming)

"Listening to More than Salsa: A Letter of Appreciation to Dr. Frances R. Aparicio. Latino Studies 18.2 (2020): 269-276

"Presente!: The Young Lords in Loisaida," in Pasado y Presente: Art after the Young Lords, 1969-2019." The Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York, NY 2019

"Montage Quotidien: The Photographs of Máximo Rafael Colón." Puerto Rican Migration Then and Now Through the Lens of Contemporary Art, 1950-2019. Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, N.Y. 2019

"Power and Memory: 50 Years of Struggle, Shared Legacies of Resistance." Power and Memory: 50 Years of Struggle, Shared Legacies of Resistance. Hampshire College, Amherst, M.A. 2017

"¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York at the Loisaida Inc. Center" Co-Author with Libertad O. Guerra. ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York. Bronx Museum of the Arts, 2015

"Rejecting the Shadow: Steve Berrios, An Apache of the Skins, Discusses His Musical Influences, Latin Jazz Music, and the Significance of the Fort Apache Band." Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, 16.2 (Fall 2004): 184-193

"Memorializing La Lupe and Lavoe: Singing Vulgarity, Transnationalism, and Gender." Co-Author with Frances R. Aparicio. Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rcian Studies, 16.2 (Fall 2004): 78-101

Invited Guest Editor (with Juan Flores). Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. Special Issue on Puerto Rican Music: Roots and Routes of Puerto Rican Music. Volume 16, Issues 1 and 2 (2004)

"El Hombre que Respira Debajo del Agua: Performing Memory and Diasporicity through the Death of Héctor Lavoe." 161-186. Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meaning in Latin Popular Music. Ed by Lise Waxer. New York: Routledge, 2002

"Nothing Connects us all but Imagines Sounds: Performing Trans-Boricua Memories, Identities, and Nationalisms Through the Death of Héctor Lavoe." 207-233. Mambo Montage: The Latinzation of New York City. Co-Edited by Agustín Laó-Montes and Arlene Dávila. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001

Book Review. Puerto Rican Arrival in New York: Narrative of the Migration, 1920-1950. Juan Flores (ed). New West Indian Guide 83.1 (2009): 149-152

Book Review. From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz. Raul Fernandez. Latino Studies 6.3 (Fall 2008): 348-354

EXHIBITIONS CURATED

Curator.  Montage Quotidien: The Photographs of Máximo Rafael Colón.  Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York. January – April 2019.

Co-Curator, with Amy Halliday and Pablo Delano. Museum of the Old Colony. Hampshire College Art Gallery, Amherst, MA. https://sites.hampshire.edu/gallery/the-museum-of-the-old-colony/ June 1 – November 11, 2018.

Co-Curator, with Chris Tinson, PhD. Power and Memory:  50 Years of Struggle, Shared Legacies of Resistance. Hampshire College, Amherst, MA. March 20 – April 26, 2017.

 Co-Curator, with Libertad O. Guerra.  ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York.  Loisaida Inc. Center, New York, N.Y. Part of a simultaneous multi-venue exhibit at El Museo del Barrio and the Bronx Museum of the arts. July 30 – December 1, 2015.

Curator, The New Rican Spirit: New Rican Village Alumni Reunion, Roundtable, and Reception. Lower Eastside Girls Club. New York, N.Y. Nov 7, 2015