Gabriel A. Torres Colón
Assistant Professor (race, politics, sports, and intellectual history)
he/his/him
Dr. Torres Colón is accepting graduate students.
Dr. Torres Colón is a cultural anthropologist with research and teaching interests in race, politics, sports, and intellectual history. His ethnographic research includes the politics of difference among Christians and Muslims in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, racial experience in US boxing gyms, cultural understandings of ancestry in the Caribbean, and Black flourishment in Afro-Puerto Rican communities—particularly in relation to aesthetic expression, mangrove ecological conservation, and anti-racist politics. He also researches the intellectual history of race in anthropology and the intersections between early American anthropology and philosophy.
Drawing on anthropological, feminist, critical race, and pragmatist insights, Dr. Torres Colón theorizes across his work to examine how humans embody and politicize differences. His research and writing employs humanistic, social scientific, and biocultural methodologies.
Representative Publications
Books
Torres Colón, G.A. 2024. Styles for Flourishing: Histories of Survival in the Racial Niche. Columbia University Press. View Book.
Torres Colón, G.A. and Jada Benn Torres. 2020. Genetic Ancestry: Our Stories, Our Pasts. Routledge Press. View Book.
Articles
Torres Colón, G.A. 2024. “Neglect by Concern: Seeding Resistance in Puerto Rico’s Mangrove Forest.” Transforming Anthropology, 32:2, 86-96. View Article
Torres Colón, G.A. 2023. “Racial Experience and Knowing the Political in Liberal Democracies.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power (online). View Article
Torres Colón, G.A. 2022 “Fighting for Family and Glory: Hope, Racialization, and Exploitation in a U.S. Boxing Gym” Journal of Sports and Social Issues, 46 (2): 156-175. View Article
Torres Colón, G.A.. 2018. “Racial Experience as Bioculturally Embodied Difference and Political Possibilities for Resisting Racism.” The Pluralist, Vol. 13(1). View Article.
Torres Colón, G.A. and Jada Benn Torres. 2017. “¿Afrocaribeños y originarios? Genética, memoria y presencia en los pueblos originarios caribeños.” Anales del Caribe. Centros de Estudios del Caribe, Casa de las Américas, Habana, Cuba. September issue. View Article.
Torres Colón, G.A., S. Smith, and J. Fucillo. 2016. “Concussions and Risk within Cultural Contexts of Play” Qualitative Health Research, Vol.27 (7): 1077-1089. View Article.
Hobbs, C. and G.A. Torres Colón. 2016. “Towards a Pragmatist Anthropology: Lessons from the Boas/Dewey Intellectual Milieu.” The Pluralist, Vol 11 (1): 126-135. View Article.