Rene R. Cordero

Biography

Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Harlem, NYC, René Cordero’s research interest and teaching spans modern Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino/a/x history, with a more specific focus on race, politics, and state governance in the Caribbean and Latinx contexts during the twentieth century. His current manuscript project tells the institutional history of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD), which played a significant role in the Dominican Republic’s national politics during the twentieth century. Through oral histories, photographs, state documents, and university archives, René chronicles the rise of this peculiar public institution as it witnessed and participated in the seismic political, demographic, and cultural transformations of Dominican society. His courses and teaching interests include the history of borders across Latin America and the Caribbean and its role in Latin America’s processes of state formation and construction of national and racial identities. He also teaches the history of youth and student movements in Latin America; and aspires to teach a course on the history of drug trafficking and drug capitalism in Latin America and the Caribbean. René is also the coordinator of Opening the Archives Dominican Republic (OTA), a digital archive housed at the Brown Library that makes thousands of declassified documents about Dominican and U.S. relations during the Cold War available for scholars, students, and the public.

Selected Publications

René Cordero, “Chronicle of a Massacre: The Archive’s Redemptive and Transformative Potential,” Estudios Sociales: Memorias del Autoritarísmo, Vol. 44, No. 165, Enero-Junio 2022, 201-211.
http://estudiossociales.bono.edu.do/index.php/es/article/view/1045/1002

René Cordero, “The Latin American Archive: From State Repression to Political Redemption.” Washington D.C., Woodrow Wilson Cold War International History Project, May 11, 2020. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/latin-american-archive-state-repression-political-redemption

“Animal-Human Vocabulary Builder” by Dominick Acocella and René Cordero CUNY Academic Works Open Educational Resources https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_oers/372/

Research Interests

Modern Latin America and the Caribbean, Student and Youth Movements in Latin America, Global 1960s, Drug Histories, Migration, State Governance, U.S. Empire