Mayra Rivera

Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies
Mayra Rivera
Divinity 405

 

On leave

Spring 2025, Fall 2025

Education

  • BS ChE, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez
  • MTS, PhD, Drew University

Profile

Mayra Rivera is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies at Harvard University. Rivera works at the intersections between philosophy of religion, literature, and theories of coloniality, race and gender—with particular attention to Caribbean postcolonial thought.  

Her research explores the relationship between discursive and material dimensions of existence in shaping human embodiment and socio-material ecologies. Her most recent book, Poetics of the Flesh (2015), analyzes theological, philosophical, and political descriptions of “flesh” as metaphors for understanding how social discourses materialize in human bodies. Her book, The Touch of Transcendence (2007), explores the relationship between models of divine otherness and ideas about interhuman difference. She is also co-editor, with Stephen Moore, of Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology (2010) and, with Catherine Keller and Michael Nausner, of Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (2004). 

Rivera is currently working on a project that explores the relationships between coloniality and ecological thought through Caribbean thought. 

Full CV (PDF)

Courses

View HDS courses taught by Mayra Rivera in the my.harvard Course Search.

Also view FAS courses taught by Mayra Rivera. (HDS students: for jointly offered and reading and research courses, please enroll in the HDS version of the course.)

All Harvard courses

Selected publications

See also

Support

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