SUNY New Paltz is pleased to announce the appointment of two full-time, tenure-track faculty in the Department of Black Studies. Cruz Bueno, who currently serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Black Studies at the College, and Nicole Carr, an instructor at the University of Miami, will begin their new duties in the fall 2016 semester.
“With these hires, we are on track to rebuilding the faculty ranks in this department, which experienced an unprecedented number of faculty departures and retirements last spring,” said Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Stella Deen. “I’m grateful to the faculty and students who helped select these new faculty members and I am proud of the camaraderie and collaboration of students, faculty, staff, administrators and alumni who have come together and demonstrated their commitment to rebuilding this longstanding and valued department at our College.”
Cruz Bueno
In the Black Studies Department this semester, Dr. Cruz Bueno is teaching Race and Racism in U.S. History; and Blacks in the Caribbean, 1492-Present. These courses align with Bueno’s teaching and research background, which focuses on the web of social forces that produce economic inequality, often at the disproportionate expense of people of color.
Prior to coming to SUNY New Paltz, Bueno taught at Wesleyan University, Central Connecticut State University and most recently at Siena College, where she served as an assistant professor of economics. She has presented at a number of regional and national professional conferences on subjects including gender violence and poverty in the Dominican Republic and other Latin American and Caribbean nations, and is a recipient of the 2014 Rhonda Williams Prize from the International Association for Feminist Economics, an award given to a young scholar for research that is activist-oriented and addresses issues of gender, race and class.
She holds a Ph. D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Nicole Carr
Nicole Carr comes to New Paltz from the University of Miami, where she has served as a literature instructor since 2015, teaching courses in Africana Studies and African American Literature. From 2009-2014, she served as a composition instructor at Barry University, in Miami Shores, Fla.
Carr’s research explores the mammy archetype and the way it “informs and complicates the lived experience and representations of black women’s humanity,” she explains. She has presented her work at a number of regional and national professional conferences on the representation of gender and race in literature. She is the recipient of the McKnight Graduate Fellowship (2010-2016), designed to address the under-representation of African American and Hispanic faculty at colleges and universities in Florida.
Next month, Carr will complete her Ph.D. in English from the University of Miami.
The Department of Black Studies is now working to hire a Visiting Assistant Professor in History to start in the fall. Following the periodic program evaluation of May 2015 and a review of the curriculum dated January 2016, Department Chair Major Coleman and the new faculty will plan revisions to the Black Studies major program; this plan will guide the search for a third tenure-track position.
