Karen Jaime is Associate Professor of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. The recipient of a Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Fellowship for 2023-2024, Jaime is a former Mellon/HIDVL Scholar in Residence at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU, a former Institute for Citizens & Scholars Career Enhancement Junior Faculty Fellow (*formerly the Woodrow Wilson Career), a former Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellow and Chancellor’s Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Jaime's award-winning monograph, The Queer Nuyorican: Racialized Sexualities and Aesthetics in Loisaida (NYU Press, 2021) argues for a reexamination of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe as a historically queer space, both in terms of sexualities and performance practices. Her critical writing has been published, or is forthcoming, in Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, e-Misférica, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, ASAP/J, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Performance Matters and in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking.
Jaime is also an accomplished spoken word/performance artist who served as the host/curator of the Friday Night Poetry Slam at the world-renowned Nuyorican Poets Cafe (2003-2005). She also co-edited an anthology celebrating the life and legacy of Nuyorican Poets Cafe co-founder, Miguel Algarín entitled Memorias de Miguel: The Hard Work of Love. Her poetry is included in The Best of Panic! En Vivo From the East Village, Flicker and Spark: A Queer Anthology of Spoken Word and Poetry, in a special issue of Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary and Art Journal, “Out Latina Lesbians,” and in the anthology Latinas: Struggles and Protest in 21st Century USA.
