Office:	McGraw 212
Phone:	(607) 255-6773

Professor Vilma Santiago-Irizarry, Associate Professor in Anthropology and Latino Studies, is also affiliated with Latin American Studies, American Studies, Public Affairs, Law and Society, and Women's Studies. She has taught in the Puerto Rican Studies department at CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice and did her graduate degrees in anthropology at NYU. Her research has examined the issues and paradoxes generated in the production and deployment of ethnic constructs, especially in institutional settings, which are then applied toward the maintenance and reproduction of existing structures of inequality. She has addressed these issues in Medicalizing Ethnicity: The Construction of Latino Identity in a Psychiatric Setting (Cornell 2001). Prof. Santiago-Irizarry has engaged in extensive field research on arts education, mental health and medical issues, and on substance abuse prevention programs in schools, penal institutions, and community-based organizations in New York City; she has also done ethnohistorical research on the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, especially on Cuba and Puerto Rico. Other interests include language, ethnicity and identity, law, and institutional culture, both in the US and in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Prof. Santiago-Irizarry holds a Certificate in Movement Analysis from the Laban Centre (Goldsmith's College, University of London) and a JD from the University of Puerto Rico Law School. She practiced public interest law for eleven years in Puerto Rico, including both criminal trial practice and civil rights litigation, and danced professionally for much of that time.