Agnes Lugo-Ortiz is a specialist in nineteenth-century Latin American literature, and in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Caribbean cultural history. Her work focuses on questions concerning the relationships between cultural production and the formation of modern socio-political identities. This is the subject of her book Identidades imaginadas: Biografía y nacionalidad en el horizonte de la guerra (Cuba 1860-1898) and of her current book-length project ”Riddles of Modern Identity: Biography and Visual Portraiture in Slaveholding Cuba (1760-1886).“ She is the author of numerous essays that address the interconnections between queer sexualities, gender and anti-colonial politics in twentieth-century Puerto Rico. Since 1994 she has been on the advisory board of the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, and is co-editor of Herencia. The Anthology of Hispanic Literature of the United States, En otra voz. Antología de la literatura hispana de los Estados Unidos, and Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage, vol. V. She is also the coordinator of the Humanities Division's Project Towards a New Americas Studies.