Alejandra Bronfman (NHC Fellow, 2025–26)

Alejandra Bronfman is a historian of media and the Caribbean with particular interests in networks of knowledge production, cultural practices, and imperial legacies. Her first book, Measures of Equality: Race, Citizenship and Social Science in Cuba, 1902–1940 (The University of North Carolina Press, 2004) examined the relationship between race, social science, and black activism in early twentieth-century Cuba. A regional and entangled understanding of the Caribbean framed two subsequent monographs, On the Move: The Caribbean Since 1989 (Zed Books, 2007), and Isles of Noise: Sonic Media in the Caribbean (The University of North Carolina Press, 2016). Her current interest in sound and media grew out of the recognition of their simultaneous centrality and invisibility in Caribbean historiography. 

Bronfman has collaborated on and contributed to additional projects and programs that open conversations on sound and media in the Caribbean, including the Radio Preservation Task Force, the New Books Network, as founder of the Caribbean Studies Channel, and Libros/Arte, an exhibit of handmade books at the University Art Museum, for which she served as co-curator. She was also co-principal investigator on the NEH-funded Summer Seminar (2021) and international conference (2024) on Radio and Decolonization in Global Perspective. 

Selected Publications

• Bronfman, Alejandra. “‘How Much Noise Can a Human Being Stand?’: Contested Knowledge and the Colonial State in Puerto Rico.” Resonance 5, no. 1 (2024): 3–18.
• Bronfman, Alejandra. “‘Grappling all Day’: Towards an Environmental and Labor History of the Telegraph.” In Acoustics of Empire, edited by Peter McMurray and Priya Mukhopadhyay, 35–54. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2024.
• Bronfman, Alejandra. “‘Travels With Albizu Campos’ Voice: A Haunted History.” American Music 42, no. 1 (Spring 2024): 22–33.
• Bronfman, Alejandra. Isles of Noise: Sonic Media in the Caribbean. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
• Bronfman, Alejandra. Measures of Equality: Social Science, Citizenship and Race in Cuba, 1902–1940. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004.