Sabia McCoy-Torres

Sabia McCoy-Torres is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Africana Studies at Tulane University and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Anthropology. She is also affiliated with the Stone Center for Latin American Studies. A social and cultural anthropologist, her scholarship examines gender and sexuality, race, transnationalism, migration, and popular culture across the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States.

McCoy-Torres is the author of Vibes Up: Reggae and Afro-Caribbean Migration from Costa Rica to Brooklyn (New York University Press, 2024), which received Second Place for the Caribbean Studies Association’s 2025 Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Award. Drawing on ethnographic research in Costa Rica and Brooklyn, Vibes Up examines reggae as a site through which Afro-Caribbean communities produce belonging, negotiate race, gender, and sexuality, and sustain transnational forms of Caribbean identity and community.

Her current research extends her longstanding interests in gender, sexuality, intimacy, and power. Her second book project, To Be a Woman: Sex Work and Dating Cultures, examines sex work, heterosexual intimacy, and contemporary sexual culture across Costa Rica and the United States. Bringing ethnographic research in Costa Rica into conversation with contemporary sexual culture in the United States, the project considers what women’s experiences can teach us about consent, boundaries, sexual agency, emotional expectations, and the changing terms of heterosexual intimacy.

Her scholarship has appeared in Popular Music and Society, Transforming Anthropology, Black Music Research Journal, and The Global South, and she has written public scholarship for Remezcla and Latino Rebels. She serves on the Editorial Board of Transforming Anthropology, the journal of the Association of Black Anthropologists.

McCoy-Torres received her Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Cornell University.

Research Interests

Gender and sexuality; race and racialization; intimacy and sexual culture; sex work; transnationalism and migration; Caribbean and Latin American studies; African Diaspora studies; popular culture and performance; ethnography.

Selected Publications

Book

McCoy-Torres, Sabia. 2024. Vibes Up: Reggae and Afro-Caribbean Migration from Costa Rica to Brooklyn. New York: New York University Press. Second Place Winner, 2025 Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Award, Caribbean Studies Association.

Chapters in Edited Volumes

McCoy-Torres, Sabia. 2023. “Raising Consciousness in the Costa Rican Seasonal Low.” In In the Meantime: Toward an Anthropology of the Possible, edited by Adeline Masquelier and Deborah Durham, 69–90. New York: Berghahn Books.

McCoy-Torres, Sabia. 2021. “Queering Dancehall in the Diaspora.” In Queer Nightlife, edited by Kemi Adeyemi, Kareem Khubchandani, and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, 101–112. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

McCoy-Torres, Sabia. 2019. “‘I Wanna Be the King of Sounds’: Otaku and Japanese Transnational Migrants in Brooklyn Reggae Culture.” Popular Music and Society 42(3): 284–308.

McCoy-Torres, Sabia. 2018. “Alternative Spatiality and Temporality: Diasporic Mobilities and Queer West Indian Inclusion.” The Global South 12(1): 59–88.

McCoy-Torres, Sabia. 2017. “‘Love Dem Bad’: Embodied Experience, Self-Adoration, and Eroticism in Dancehall.” Transforming Anthropology 25(2): 185–200.

McCoy-Torres, Sabia. 2016. “‘Cien porciento tico tico’: Reggae, Race, Belonging, and the Afro-Caribbean Ticos of Costa Rica.” Black Music Research Journal 36(1): 1–27.

Selected Public Scholarship

McCoy-Torres, Sabia. 2018. “Arturo Schomburg Was Vital to the Harlem Renaissance, But His Latino Identity Is Often Forgotten.” Remezcla, February 22.

McCoy-Torres, Sabia. 2018. “Uncovering Anti-Blackness in Casual Conversation: Young Hollywood’s Words to Amara La Negra.” Latino Rebels, January 9.

Affiliations & Editorial Service

Joint Appointment: Department of Anthropology and Department of Africana Studies, Tulane University

Faculty Affiliate: Stone Center for Latin American Studies, Tulane University

Editorial Board: Transforming Anthropology, Association of Black Anthropologists