Patricia Mathews

Picture of Patricia  Mathews-Salazar


Professor
Chairperson
Ethnic and Race Studies

EMAIL: pmathews@bmcc.cuny.edu

Office: S-623C

Office Hours: Wednesdays 10:00AM to 1:00PM

Phone: +1 (212) 220-1221

Professor Patricia Mathews obtained her BA in Law with a minor in Anthropology from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Thanks to a Fellowship from PUCP in Consortium with the Indiana-California program and a Fulbright Travel Grant she came to the US to pursue graduate studies. She completed her PhD in Anthropology at Yale University in 1997.

Professor Mathews has taught various courses in Anthropology, Human Geography and Women Studies. She las also offered seminars in Anthropology and Human Rights and on Ethnicity and Nationalism in the Anthropology Program at the Graduate Center, where she is member of the doctoral faculty.

Mathews has participated in various initiatives that address issues of Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice at BMCC and at CUNY. One of them is the Balancing the Curriculum Across Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Class…, a semester long Seminar for faculty and staff housed in Ethnic Studies with the support of Academic Affairs. Professor Mathews was Director of the Center for Ethnic Studies since 2008. On 1/29/2021 she became chair of the new department of Ethnic and Race Studies at BMCC.

Expertise

Anthropology/ Ethnic and Race Studies/ Indigeneity/ Indigenous women, migration and citizenship.

My research topics are on indigenous women and cultural heritage, citizenship and social exclusion. I am also interested in changing notions of indigeneity in the Peruvian Andes (outskirts of the city of Cuzco)and also in northwest Argentina (Calchaquí Valley of Tucumán province).

Degrees

  • B.A. Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Law,1984
  • M.A. Indiana University , Anthropology,1988
  • M.S. Yale University, Anthropology,1992
  • Ph.D. Yale University, Anthropology,1997

Courses Taught

Research and Projects

  • Indigenous Women and Living Heritage in the communities inside the archaeological park of Sacsahuaman, Cusco, Peru
  • Faculty Mentor in NEH Project: Bridging Historias through Latino History and Culture
    An NEH Bridging Cultures at Community Colleges Project:
    BRIDGING HISTORIAS through Latino History and Culture: An NEH Bridging Cultures at Community Colleges–
    Bridging Historias is a faculty development program directed by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning in partnership with Queensborough Community College. The program addresses the increasingly influential body of scholarship on the importance of Latino/a culture in American history and is designed to expand the teaching of this topic across the humanities disciplines.Websitehttp://bridginghistorias.gc.cuny.edu/

Publications

Honors, Awards and Affiliations

PSC-CUNY 43

Geographic Information Systems–NSF grant to fund a new cross-disciplinary program between Social Sciences and Computer Information Systems at BMCC; Co-PI

PSC-CUNY 40 GLORIFYING THE INCAS, NEGLECTING THEIR HEIRS: Indigenous Women, Cultural Heritage and the Dilemmas of Indian Identity in Cuzco, Peru

PSC-CUNY 39 Glorifying the Incas, Neglecting their Heir: Indigenous Women in Two Communities in Cusco, Peru. 2007PSC

CUNY 37 AwardWomen and Healthcare in Cusco, PeruBridging Historias through Latino History and Culture

NEH Bridging Cultures Project in Community Colleges. Faculty Mentor

Additional Information

My dissertation focused on ethnic and gender identity among indigenous people in the region of Tucuman, northwest Argentina. After that I have conducted research on indigenous women, social exclusion and cultural heritage in the surroundings of Cuzco, Peru. I teach courses in Women’s Studies, Peoples and Cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean and coordinate faculty development initiatives on various topics like Race, Ethnicity, Sexuality, Gender, etc.