Alexa Rodriguez

Alexa Rodríguez is a Mellon Postdoctoral Research Associate. Her dissertation, “ ‘For the Prosperity of the Nation’: Education and the US Occupation of the Dominican Republic, 1916-1924” uses historical methods to examine the 1916 U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic to study how U.S. and Dominican stakeholders used public schools to disseminate their notions of Dominican citizenship. Rodríguez is currently working on a book manuscript, Crafting Dominicanidad, an intellectual history that examines how Dominican stakeholders used public schools to articulate and circulate competing notions of Dominican racial, class, and national identity during the early twentieth century. 

Prior to joining UVA, Rodríguez worked at the Dominican Studies Institute at the City of New York and taught elementary school in Baltimore City. She was also a 2020 dissertation fellow for the National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation. 

Ph.D., Teachers College, Columbia University, 2021
M.S. Ed., Johns Hopkins University, 2015
B.A., Fordham University, 2013