Mayra Rivera

 RIVERA is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies at Harvard Divinity School and Director of the Humanities Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. She served as president of the American Academy of Religion in 2022. 

Rivera works at the intersections between religion, literature, and theories of coloniality, race and gender—with particular attention to Caribbean thought.

Her most recent book, Poetics of the Flesh (2015), explores how social discourses become materialized in human bodies, by analyzing theological, philosophical, and political descriptions of “flesh.”

Rivera is currently writing a book that explores the contributions of Caribbean history and literature to discussion of climate change that take seriously how colonialty has been shaping the Earth.

Other notable publications include, The Touch of Transcendence (2007), which explores the relationship between models of divine otherness and ideas about interhuman difference. She is also co-editor, with Stephen Moore, of Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology (2010) and, with Catherine Keller and Michael Nausner, of Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (2004).  

Please contact faculty assistant, Ani Kalousdian, akalousdian@hds.harvard.edu, for a copy of Mayra Rivera's CV.