JOTERIA REFLECTIONS FROM THE VALLEY: READING AND TEACHING ANZALDÚA

Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr.

Dr. Alvarez Jr. is a first-generation college student and a former elementary school teacher. An interdisciplinary scholar, he obtained an B.A. and M.A. in Spanish from California State University, Northridge, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Chicana and Chicano Studies from University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include Chicanx and Latinx aesthetics, performance, and popular culture, Gender and Sexuality, Queer oral histories, Los Angeles queer Latinx histories, Queer of color theories, Jotería Studies, Jotería pedagogies, Queer Space, Feminist geographies, Sound Studies, and Critical Fat Studies. His academic and creative work has been published in Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Revista Bilingüe/Bilingual Review, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Journal of Lesbian Studies, and Sounding Out! The Sound Studies Blog. Currently, he is working on a book manuscript titled Finding Sequins in the Rubble: Memory, Space and Aesthetics in Queer Latinx Los Angeles, an oral history and archival project which maps physical and ephemeral sites of memory and quotidian moments of pleasure and resistance for queer and trans Chicanx and Latinx communities in LA. He is also working on a book of essays and poems about growing up queer in a Cuban and Mexican family in the San Fernando Valley. Prior to joining CSU Fullerton, he held a joint appointment in the Departments of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and University Studies at Portland State University. Before his time in Portland, he taught in the department of Africana and Latino Studies at State University of New York, Oneonta. A founding member of the Association for Jotería Arts, Activism, and Scholarship, he has served on the board of the organization as Co-chair elect, Co-chair, and Ex-officio Co-chair, and co-coordinated the 2019 biennial national conference at Portland State University. He is a 2020 Faculty Fellow for the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, and Honor 41, an LGBTQ Latinx organization, named him one of The 41 List 2019-2020 Honorees, highlighting him as a Latinx LGBTQ role model.