Leticia Alvarado

Leticia Alvarado is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University and a B.A. in Visual Art and Latin American Studies from Columbia University. Her research focuses on intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and visual culture in Latinx and Afro-diasporic contexts. She is the author of Abject Performances: Aesthetic Strategies in Latino Cultural Production (Duke University Press, 2018), recognized with multiple awards, and her work appears in journals such as Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies and Small Axe.

Current projects include Cut/Hoard/Suture: Aesthetics in Relation, supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Her scholarship critiques colonial technologies of race-making and explores speculative futures through figures like the Dominican ciguapa. Awards include the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and Smithsonian Latino Studies Fellowship.

Her teaching and research bridge American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and queer theory, emphasizing decolonial methodologies and transnational frameworks. Recent work engages art by Firelei Báez to interrogate posthumanism and environmental justice in minoritarian aesthetics.