Lauren Barnes is pursuing a Ph.D. in English and African American and Diaspora Studies with a minor in Latina(o) Studies. For her dissertation, she examines how the concept of a Black diaspora can be more capaciously understood through centering the relationship between the Anglophone and Hispanophone Caribbean in relation to the U.S. South. In her research, she centers the literary in relation to Spanish and English language archives, placing early to mid-twentieth century newspapers and United Fruit Company archival records in conversation with literary texts to highlight circuits of transnational constructions of Black identity. Ultimately, she traces circuits of Black resistance across Central America, including Costa Rica, Panama, Jamaica, and Honduras and the U.S. South.