Dr. Katie M. Duarte
I am Dr. Katie Duarte, a Postdoctoral Fellow in Latinx Studies at Smith College. My areas of expertise include gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, intersectionalities, Latinidad, cultural sociology, and qualitative methods.
My work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, and Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. I have also received recognition from the Fulbright and the American Sociological Association.
Overall, my research agenda uses a cultural sociology approach to analyze the meanings and narratives we use to understand our experiences or cultural items, specifically for Afro-Latinx and Latinx people. Currently, my book project considers the gendered narratives and Latinx and Black identity-making through curly hair and the natural hair movement amongst Dominicans (of all genders) in New York City and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic utilizing interviews and ethnographic observations at curly hair salons. I also explore how Dominican women (re)construct their ideas of racialized femininity and beauty with their hair journey or their personal histories of hair.