Puerto Rican Studies

Abstract

ACCORDING TO FRANK BONILLA'S PUERTO RICAN STUDIES AND THE Interdisciplinary Approach, American Studies surfaced as an interdiscipline in United States universities in the 1930s. It arose as a movement against the neglect of United States as against British literature and history in WASP-dominated departments of History and English. Rican Studies also emerged as an interdisciplinary field and for similar reasons.' In its struggle to establish a space of its own at the university level, Rican Studies confronted many of the conflicts endemic to institutional curriculum change. As Josephine Nieves points out in Puerto Rican Studies: Roots and Challenges, it struggled to establish its own autonomy; it rejected the traditional approaches to learning about Ricans and defined new sources of learning that stemmed from within the Rican experience; and it discarded apologist and colonizing ideologies and designed new theoretical constructs within which fresh analyses about the Rican condition were generated. Lastly, it argued for the application of knowledge to the resolution of community issues and struggles. Rican Studies