Summary
Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, English
I am the eldest of four kids and the first in my family to earn a Ph.D. I was born in Tucson, AZ, but grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico until I was fifteen, at which point my parents decided to migrate to the United States so that my siblings and I could have better educational opportunities. We settled in Austin, Texas, and there I was able to experience the benefits and challenges of being bicultural and binational. I also became deeply immersed in the music and coffee shop scene as a way to cope with culture shock and the challenges of migrating, learning a new language and coming to terms with my queerness. I studied Biochemistry, Philosophy, Anthropology and Spanish at Boston University before obtaining my doctorate in Latin American Cultures and Languages from The University of Texas at Austin. I became an academic because I experienced how education can be liberatory and I want to continue working with students toward dismantling entrenched systems that produce and reproduce oppression.
In 2018 I joined the University of Nevada, Reno, where I currently hold a joint position in the Department of. Communication Studies and the Gender, Race, and Identity Department. My research focuses on 20th and 21st-century cultural studies of the Americas, with an emphasis on the ethics of representation in cultural narratives centered on migration, human rights, violence, race and gender in film and social media. My primary research examines the cultural production created in response to the women-killings in Ciudad Juárez since 1993, Missing and Murdered Women and Girls, and trans femicides. As an interdisciplinary humanities scholar I highlight the intersections of storytelling and their role in shaping social movements, cultural narratives and public policies. I strongly believe in the power of art to transform entrenched negative social paradigms to bring love and joy into the world and create better communities and on my free time I also participate in the Diente de León Collective.