I am an Associate Professor of Women & Gender Studies and Co-Director of LGBTQ Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. I am also a performance artist. Both my research and my performance work explore queerness in Caribbean and Latinx communities.
My research focuses on 19th-21st century Latinx media and literature, with a specialization in queer Caribbean cultural production. My book– Playful Protest: The Political Work of Joy in Latinx Media (University of Illinois Press, 2023) – defines joy as a politicized form of pleasure, one that not only produces gratification but also unsettles social norms of gender, sexuality, race, and class. The book examines Puerto Rican and Cuban diasporic media from 1960-present. It contends that when cultural producers insert joy into media texts—ranging from music, to public activist demonstrations, to sitcoms—they resist the dominant stories told about Latinx joy over centuries of colonialism and imperialism.
I am also currently working on an oral history project that explores the role of Latinx disc jockeys in the development of disco and dance music in 1970s New York. This is part of a larger book project entitled Macho Man: Performances of Latinidad in the Disco Era.
My work has been published in Signs, Feminist Studies, Meridians, Frontiers, Letras Femeninas, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Remezcla, LatinxSpaces, Latino Rebels, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.
Like my research, my teaching draws heavily on queer and performance methodologies. I encourage students to “try out” intellectual concepts using their bodies, through decolonial pedagogies such as Spoken Word Poetry and Theatre of the Oppressed. I also facilitate performance poetry workshops for schools and community organizations. My own performance work is invested in making political statements in and through the body.