USC.edu
Department of American Studies and Ethnicity

Jaden Morales

Ph.D. Student
Jaden Morales
Pronouns They / Them / Theirs Email jadenmor@usc.edu

Biography

Born and raised in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, Jaden (they/them) is a Puerto Rican environmental humanities scholar and 4th-year Ph.D. candidate in American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Jaden earned their B.A. with distinction in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale University, where they received the Justice Carlos R. Moreno Prize for Best Senior Thesis in Latinx Studies and the La Casa Cultural Community Outreach Award for their public-facing work in New Haven. 

Tentatively entitled “Petro-Plantations,” Jaden’s dissertation is a political ecology and environmental history of energy and non/sovereign statecraft in Puerto Rico. From the boom of the sugar plantation to the bust of the hydrocarbon processing industry, Jaden offers an archival and visual account of how energy and energy infrastructure have long been instrumentalized to consolidate racial and class hegemony in the captive colony. Tracing various and concurrent energy regimes alongside U.S. imperial and Puerto Rican colonial state formation in the 20th century, Jaden argues that the juridico-political and cultural state architecture has been designed to expropriate and siphon the energy capacities of racially differentiated land and labor toward the global fossil economy. Seizing various energy crises and disjuncture within the double-bind of overlapping sovereignties, Jaden’s dissertation further reveals how everyday Puerto Ricans engaged in militant labor and environmental struggles to curb the states’ wanton environmental destruction and fused their efforts to shape the archipelago’s energy future with their anti-colonial aspirations for freedom. This dissertation traces the compounding calamities of energy colonialism and ecological catastrophe structuring contemporary Puerto Rico to the afterlife of property, where anti-blackness and blackouts record the assemblage of state and capital, criollo whiteness and fossil fuels. 

As a Solidarity Fellow for the Diasporic Solidarities Lab, a $2M dollar Mellon-funded Black feminist digital humanities initiative, 2024 Wrigley Institute Graduate Fellow, and Co-Chair of USC’s Latinx Geographies and Africana Research Cluster, Jaden maintains a steadfast commitment to public programming and digital humanities scholarship. Within and beyond academia, they further engage in public-facing and community-oriented work as a consultant for USC’s Writing Center, biographical texts, and film documentaries.

Their work has been generously supported by the Point Foundation, USC’s Center for Science, Technology, & Public Life, USC’s Center for Latinx and Latin American Studies, Yale’s Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, Puerto Rican Studies Association, and USC’s Department American Studies & Ethnicity. 

Education

  • B.A. Ethnic Studies, Yale University, 5/2019

  • Research Keywords

    Puerto Rican and Caribbean Studies; Political Ecology; Environmental Studies & History; Racial Capitalism; Labor Studies; Histories of Empire and Colonialism; Science and Technology Studies; Caribbean Theory & Cultural Studies; Energy Humanities; Infrastructure Studies

  • Conference Presentations

    • “Method, Affect, and Abolition in the Blackened Laboratory.” American Studies Association, Baltimore, MD. , 11/2024
    • “Life Beyond Apocalypse? Gender, Ecology, and Caribbean Survivance in the Racial Capitalocene.” American Studies Association, Baltimore, MD. , 11/2024
    • “Wasted Land, Surplus Lives: Scientific Visual Aesthetics of the Racial Capitalocene in Puerto Rico.” Puerto Rican Studies Conference, Santa Cruz, CA. , 8/2024
    • “Diasporic Solidarities 2: Preserving Diasporic Oral History Projects, Interrogating Puerto Rican Film Studies, and Modeling Caribbean Feminist Archival Ethics.” Puerto Rican Studies Conference, Santa Cruz, CA. , 8/2024
    • “Archipelago of Waste: Race, Ecology, and Techno-Colonial Capitalism in 20th-Century Puerto Rico,” Science and Technology Studies Graduate Student Symposium, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. , 11/2023
    • “Geographies of Perreo: Reggaeton Epistemology, Relational (Re)Mappings, and Worldmaking.” Puerto Rican Studies Conference, Holyoke, MA. , 10/2022
    • “Los Pepinianos de San Sebastián: Puerto Rican Diaspora and Reconciling Liminality Through Political Mobilization and Placemaking in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, 1960s-80s.” Senior Symposium for the Ethnicity, Race, Migration Program, Yale University. , 5/2019
    • “Los Pepinianos de San Sebastián: Puerto Rican Diaspora and Reconciling Liminality Through Political Mobilization and Placemaking in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, 1960s-80s.” 2nd Annual CT Undergraduate Ethnic Studies Symposium, Panel: Place and Liminality: Spatial Reckoning with U.S. Empire, Hartford, C , 4/2019

    Other Presentations

    • Despierta Boricua, Yale, and the New Haven Community., Despierta Boricua in the Archives: Puerto Rican History and Activism at Yale University, Virtual, 2021-2022
    • Queerness and the Yale Experience: Conversation with Despierta Boricua Alumni, Despierta Boricua 50th Anniversary Celebration, New Haven, CT, 2020-2021
    • An Alumni-Student Mentorship Model: Scholar of the House, 50 Years of Latinos at Yale: Making it Nuestra Casa, New Haven, CT, 2018-2019
    • What Does It Mean to Be Latinx, 50 Years of Latinos at Yale: Making it Nuestra Casa, New Haven, CT, 2018-2019
    • Identity and Subject Formation, 1st Annual CT Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Symposium, New Haven, CT, 2017-2018
    • Decolonizing Gender, Latinx Ivy League Conference, New Haven, CT, 2016-2017
    • (summer 2022) AMST 135. Peoples and Cultures of the Americas
    • (spring 2023) AMST 250. The African Diaspora
    • (summer 2023) AMST 135. Peoples and Cultures of the Americas
    • (spring 2024) AMST 250. The African Diaspora
    • AMST 250: The African Diaspora: “Mapping Afro-Caribbean Soundscapes: The Socio-Political Cartographies of Reggaetón.”, Spring 2024
    • AMST 135: Peoples and Cultures of the Americas: “Geographies of Perreo: Reggaetón Epistemology and the Socio-Political Sonics of Reggaetón.”, Fall 2022

  • Magazine/Trade Publication

    • Morales, J. A.The Struggle for Energy Sovereignty in Puerto Rico’s Gubernatorial Elections. NACLA.
    • American Studies & Ethnicity Fall Travel Award, Fall 2022
    • Point Foundation BIPOC Scholar, Fall 2022
    • American Studies & Ethnicity Spring Travel Award, Spring 2022
    • American Studies & Ethnicity Summer Research Grant , Spring 2022
    • USC Center for Latinx and Latin American Studies Graduate Student Summer Grant , Spring 2022
    • Catherine J.K. Sandoval La Casa Cultural at Yale Scholar of the House Fellowship, 2018-2019
    • Justice Carlos R. Moreno Prize for Best Senior Thesis in Latinx Studies, 2018-2019
    • La Casa Cultural Julia de Burgos at Yale Community Outreach Award, 2018-2019
    • Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration Summer Research Fellowship, 2018-2019
    • Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration Winter Research Fellowship, 2018-2019
    • Critical Innovation Fund, Spring 2019
    • Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar, 2015-2016

  • Professional Memberships

    • American Studies Association, 2022 –
    • Puerto Rican Studies Association, 2021 –