Petra Rivera-Rideau
Associate Professor of American Studies
Interdisciplinary scholar studying race and ethnic identities and popular culture in Latin America and U.S. Latina/o communities.
Petra Rivera-Rideau researches Latin music and racial politics. She specializes in Latin music and US Latinx popular cultures. Dr. Rivera-Rideau has a Ph.D. in African Diaspora Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in African American Studies from Harvard University. She has taught at Wellesley College since 2016, and she is currently an Associate Professor and Chair of the American Studies department. Prior to this, she worked as an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Virginia Tech until 2012. Dr. Rivera-Rideau held a postdoctoral fellowship in Latin American and Iberian Studies at the University of Richmond from 2010-2012.
Dr. Rivera-Rideau is author of three books, all published by Duke University Press: Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico (2015); Fitness Fiesta!: Selling Latinx Culture through Zumba (2024); and P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance, co-authored with Vanessa Díaz (2026). A Spanish-language version of the latter, P FKN R: Bad Bunny y la música como acto de resistencia, is also available from Planeta in 2026. Dr. Rivera-Rideau co-edited Afro-Latin@s in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas with Jennifer A. Jones and Tianna S. Paschel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). In addition, she has published numerous book chapters, as well as peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Identities, Latino Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, and Journal of Popular Music Studies. Her article “If I Were You: Tego Calderón’s Diasporic Interventions” (Small Axe) won the Blanca Silvestrini Prize for Best Article in Puerto Rican Studies from the Puerto Rico section of the Latin American Studies Association in 2019. Fitness Fiesta! also won an honorable mention for Best Book from the Association for Latina/o and Latinx Anthropology in 2025.
In 2023, Vanessa Díaz and Dr. Rivera-Rideau created the Bad Bunny Syllabus, a website that provides resources that contextualize reggaetón artist Bad Bunny’s success in relation to Puerto Rican politics, reggaetón histories, and Latin crossovers. She recently served as a consultant for the videos about the history of reggaetón that Bad Bunny incorporated into his historic Coachella headlining set. She also developed one of the first courses about Bad Bunny in the United States which she teaches regularly at Wellesley College: AMST 323: Bad Bunny: Race, Gender, and Empire in Reggaetón.
Dr. Rivera-Rideau frequently comments on reggaetón in the media, both in the US and internationally. She has been featured in news outlets such as NPR, Agence France-Presse, El País (Spain), CBS News, O Globo (Brazil), El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico), and Rolling Stone. She has written for the Washington Post and PBS’s American Experience. She also had the honor of writing the accompanying essay that is archived with Daddy Yankee’s recording of “Gasolina” in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.
In 2025, Petra was named one of the ALX100 awarded by the nonprofit WeAreALX. This recognition celebrates Latino leaders, risk-takers, and advocates shaping the future of Massachusetts today.
Education
- B.A., Harvard University
- M.A., University of California-Berkeley
- Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley
Current and upcoming courses
Afro-Latinas/os in the U.S.
AMST290
This course examines the experiences and cultures of Afro-Latinas/os, people of both African and Latin American descent, in the United States. We will consider how blackness intersects with Latina/o identity, using social movements, politics, popular culture, and literature as the bases of our analysis. This course addresses these questions transnationally, taking into account not only racial dynamics within the United States, but also the influence of dominant Latin American understandings of race and national identity. We will consider the social constructions of blackness and Latinidad; the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the Latina/o community; immigration and racial politics; representations of Afro-Latinas/os in film, music, and literature; and African American-Latino relations.
(AMST 290 and PEAC 290 are cross-listed courses.)-
From Zumba to Taco Trucks: Consuming Latina/o Cultures
AMST235
From the Zumba Fitness Program to Jane the Virgin, salsa night to the ubiquitous taco truck, “Latin” culture is popular. But what do we make of the popularity of “Latin” culture at a time when many Latina/o communities face larger systemic inequalities related to issues such as race, ethnicity, or immigration status? How do organizations and industries represent and market Latinidad to the US public, and how do these forms of popular culture and representation influence our perceptions of Latina/o life in the United States? How do Latina/o consumers view these representations? This course explores these questions through a critical examination of the representation and marketing of Latinidad, or Latina/o identities, in US popular culture. We will pay particular attention to the intersections between Latina/o identities, belonging, immigration, race, gender, and sexuality in the United States.