My current research explores contemporay landscape photography of the U.S./Mexico border and how these images address the socio-political conditions of the borderlands. I am primarily interested in border studies, visualizing migration narratives, the politics of (in)visibility, and land's ties to nation. Other research interests include: Chicanx and Mexican altars as sites of embodied knowledge, social media as alternative archives for Chicanx histories, intersectional theory, and activist art.
I am also on the editorial board of Refract: An Open Access Visual Studies Journal.
Porter Faculty Services
“The Plush that Pricks: Melancholia and Kinship in Space in Between.” Thresholds Journal 48 (2020)
“From Public Sphere to Public Space: Patssi Valdez’s Corporeal Manifestation of the Virgen de Guadalupe.” Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas 12 (2019)
Zapatista Embroidery as Speech Act in Zapantera Negra, Sequiter, Volume 4 Issue 1 (2017)
“Veteranas and Rucas: Guadalupe Rosales’s Chicana Archive,” Latinx Archives: Art, Counterhistories, and Critical Speculation, College Art Association (CAA)Conference, February 14, 2020
“From Public Sphere to Public Space: Patssi Valdez’s Corporeal Manifestation of the Virgen de Guadalupe.”Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas Symposium, University of New Mexico Albuquerque, November 1, 2019
“Embodiment in Patssi Valdez’s Virgen de Guadalupe,” Sensing Difference: New Artistic Approaches to Embodied Knowledge, Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC), October 28, 2017
2018, UCSC Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development (SSRC-DPD) program
2017, Arts Dean’s Fund for Excellence Award, UCSC
2017, Gulnar Bosch Student Travel Assistant Grant, Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC)
2016-2017, Regent’s Fellowship, UCSC
2015-2016, Contemporary Art Curatorial Fellow, MassArt Bakalar & Paine Gallery, Boston, MA
2013-2014, Art History Graduate Scholarship, Tufts University