The fifth annual Círculo Hispanoamericano de Charleston’s Keynote Lecture Series presents Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a notable historian of Puerto Rico, the Caribbean and Latin America – and the professor who helped Bad Bunny tell the island's history.  

Description: Puerto Rican history has been a contested space ever since its early days. From Fray Íñigo Abad y la Sierra’s 1788 book to Paul G. Miller’s Historia de Puerto Rico in the early 20th century, the production of history has served different political purposes. This lecture will explore the ways that history teaching and writing gave way to racialized tropes of Puerto Rican docility and laziness. More recently, however, the state has moved to silence or erase the past through Puerto Rico’s “politics of forgetting.” The talk ends with the ways that these ideas are being challenged by artists and cultural producers, specifically focusing in the impact of Bad Bunny’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FoTOS.

Sponsors: Círculo Hispanoamericano de Charleston, the Department of Hispanic Studies and the Program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Free and open to the public! Lecture will be in English, followed by a reception.