Jennifer Ponce de León

Jennifer Ponce de León is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts & Sciences, with cross-disciplinary appointments in Latin American and Latinx Studies (LALS), Comparative Literature, and affiliations in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies (GSWS) and Cinema Studies. She serves as a member of graduate groups in Hispanic Studies and Art History, demonstrating her significant interdisciplinary presence across multiple academic units.

Her research focuses on the intersection of artistic practice and political movements, particularly examining how contemporary visual arts, literature, and performance in the Americas articulate with antisystemic movements. Her work engages deeply with Marxist social theory, anticolonial thought, and studies of hemispheric Latinx and Latin American cultural production. She approaches these topics through a materialist framework that emphasizes the relationship between aesthetics and political struggle.

Analysis of her publications reveals consistent thematic threads connecting artistic practice with resistance movements across the Americas. Her work demonstrates sophisticated engagement with Zapatismo, human rights activism, and critiques of neoliberal capitalism, often exploring how artistic forms can both reflect and actively shape political consciousness and collective action. The geographical scope spans Argentina, Mexico, and the United States, with particular attention to transnational solidarities.

• 2020 Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching by an Assistant Professor

Ponce de León serves as Associate Director of the Critical Theory Workshop/Atelier de Théorie Critique, a non-profit organization that hosts public symposia and maintains an extensive video archive. She co-directs their annual summer seminar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. During the 2025-2026 academic year, she will be a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Her curatorial work includes exhibitions such as 'Resurgent Pasts, Insurgent Futures' (2017) and 'Arrhythmias of Counter-Production: Engaged Art in Argentina, 1995-2011' (2013), demonstrating her commitment to bridging academic scholarship with artistic practice.