Dr. Petra Rivera-Rideau is Associate Professor and Chair of American Studies at Wellesley College. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with an A.B. in African and African American Studies and a Certificate in Latin American Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in African Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining Wellesley College, she taught at Virginia Tech and the University of Richmond.
Dr. Rivera-Rideau’s research explores race, popular music, Puerto Rico, and Latinx identities. Petra is the author of three books: Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico, Fitness Fiesta! Selling Latinx Culture through Zumba, and the forthcoming book P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance with Vanessa Díaz. She edited the volume Afro-Latin@s in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas with Jennifer Jones and Tianna Paschel. She has written numerous book chapters, and she has published her research in journals such as Journal of Popular Music Studies, Latino Studies, and Identities, among others. Her article, “If I Were You…: Tego Calderón’s Diasporic Interventions,” published in Small Axe, won the Blanca Silvestrini Prize for Best Article in Puerto Rican Studies from the Latin American Studies Association in 2019. She has also written for outlets like PBS American Experience and the Washington Post. Petra frequently comments on reggaetón and Latin music in media outlets such as NPR, Rolling Stone, CBC, Washington Post, Business Insider, O Globo, El Nuevo Día, and others. Dr. Rivera-Rideau and Vanessa Díaz co-founded the Bad Bunny Syllabus, a website that provides educational resources about Puerto Rico and reggaetón to contextualize the work of Bad Bunny. Petra has served as a consultant on several reggaetón projects, including for Bad Bunny’s historic Coachella headlining set in 2023.