Patricia Silver

Patricia Silver is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research has centered on Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican diaspora in the U.S. states. She holds a B.A. (Princeton University) and M.A. (University of Washington) in Comparative Literature. She completed her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at American University in 2004. Her current project has included 10 years of ethnographic, oral history, and archival research in Orlando, Florida, which has become the new center of the Puerto Rican diaspora. The project examines the challenges to and strategies for Latino, and especially Puerto Rican, political community formation in Orlando, where a historic black-white racial landscape and post–1960s claims to “color-blindness” combine with neoliberal political-economic ideologies that celebrate individual achievement in an emerging multiculturalism. In 2014, she served as expert in a lawsuit charging Orange County, Florida, with violating Latino voting rights during redistricting. Data from the deposition and trial provide a unique opportunity for detailing the play of place and politics in strategies for Latino containment and struggles for Latino empowerment in this Sunbelt city. Her publications have appeared in American Ethnologist;CENTRO Journal; Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power; Op. Cit.: Revista del Centro de Investigaciones Históricas;Southern Cultures; Memory Studies; and Latino Studies. At CPCP, she will be working on her book manuscript, Not That Kind of Latino: Difference and Politics in a Sunbelt City.