Assistant professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of History and Literature at Harvard University and the co-founder of Freedom University, a Georgia-based volunteer organization that provides college instruction to undocumented youth. She specializes in Latino/Latina studies and Hispanic Caribbean literary and cultural studies with a special focus on the Dominican Republic and its Diaspora. Her research poses a dialogue among history, literature and cultural studies, paying close attention to questions of marginality, migration, and racial and ethnic identity formation.