Isaias R
- Research Program Mentor
PhD candidate at University of California San Diego (UCSD)
Expertise
Ethnic Studies, Performance Studies (Race and Gender), Comparative Literature, Contemporary US Literature, Contemporary Latin American Literature, Literary Analysis, Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Queer Theory, Latinx Studies, Race in America, Film Studies, Gender Studies, Abjection, Affect, Aesthetics, Decolonial Pedagogy, Creative Writing, Autofiction, Fiction, Experimental Writing, Personal Epistemology as Knowledge-Making
Bio
I’m a PhD student at UC San Diego studying Ethnic Studies with three years of college-level teaching experience in Cultural Studies, Literature, Critical Theory, and Creative Writing. In my research I investigate Latinidad and its proximity to colonialism by applying concepts from affect, aesthetics, abjection, and queer theory to Latin American cultural production—from literature to film and television. I’m interested in questions of agency, authenticity, and performance of race and gender across Latin American cultures. My current project is concerned with alternative representations of queer Latinx identity in streaming-service content, such as Tanya Saracho’s Vida and Marvin Lemus & Linda Yvette Chávez’s Gentefied, and the role of emotion—assigned to characters and elicited from audiences—in determining authenticity and agency over identity-formation. I was born in Iguala, Guerrero (in southern Mexico) but was raised in Chicago for most of my life. I love Italian food, bad horror films from the 70s to the 90s, reading US, Latin American, and Japanese fiction. Although I love riding my bicycle everywhere , I hate being that person who makes everyone wait while I attach my bicycle to public transportation. In my free time I write fiction and play a variety of videogames on my Nintendo Switch (I also love anything SEGA from the 90s and 00s).Project ideas
The Body as Border: How Geopolitics Govern Gender Performance in Cristina Rivera Garza's The Iliac Crest
In Cristina Rivera Garza’s The Iliac Crest, a nameless narrator’s home is usurped when he is visited by Mexican horror-surrealist writer Amparo Dávila. Tasked with helping her find a stolen manuscript, the narrator experiences gender dysphoria as he travels between North and South City, searching for the manuscript and way to rid himself of Dávila. How does gender presentation determine how the narrator navigates the border and national identity? Following the border crossing, the narrator’s feelings towards Dávila, his job at a border sanatorium, and his relationship to his body change. Which privileges and disadvantages are assigned to the narrator’s individual gender identities after this moment, how do they determine his feelings, and what does this say about the relationship between the United States and the Global South? This research paper and conference presentation will explore how geopolitics determine gender norms by using literary criticism, textual analysis of The Iliac Crest, close-reading of Amparo Dávila’s use of horror tropes in her own fiction, applying José Esteban Muñoz’s queer theory from his work in The Sense of Brown, and archival work on border relations between the United States and Mexico.