Puerto Rico: A National History with Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

Join the Immigration History Research Center and the Katherine E. Nash Gallery to learn about the history of Puerto Rico and its diaspora from Bad Bunny collaborator, Jorell Meléndez-Badillo. 

Meléndez-Badillo will talk about his new book Puerto Rico: A National History, chronicling the history of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans from pre-Columbian times to the present. Meléndez-Badillo is associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He collaborated with Puerto Rican recording artist, Bad Bunny, to add visual lessons on Puerto Rican history to Bad Bunny’s 2025 album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos.”

This public lecture is the closing event for Katherine E. Nash Gallery’s Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora, a multidisciplinary exhibition spanning twenty-five years of Puerto Rican artistic production from forty-three artists working in Puerto Rico and its U.S. diaspora. It will be followed by a reception at the Katherine E Nash Nash Gallery at 405 21st Avenue South from 6:30-8:30pm. Both events are free and open to the public. 

This event is cosponsored by the Department of American Studies, the Department of Art, the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, the Department of History, and Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality Studies (RIDGS).