Julie A. Minich

Julie A. Minich serves as Professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin's College of Liberal Arts, with cross-appointments in English and Women's and Gender Studies. Her interdisciplinary work critically examines disability, health, and citizenship within Latina/o cultural production across the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

Educated with a Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese from Stanford University and a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Smith College, her scholarship challenges metaphors of disability as social decay. Her award-winning monograph Accessible Citizenships: Disability, Nation, and the Cultural Politics of Greater Mexico (Temple University Press, 2014) reimagines political belonging through disability narratives, while her current project Enforceable Care: Health, Justice, and Latina/o Expressive Culture critiques health ideologies framing disease as individual failure.

Her research consistently interrogates how race, gender, and (dis)ability intersect in literary and filmic texts, exposing how health crises are socially constructed rather than purely individual. This work appears in leading journals including GLQ, Comparative Literature, and the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies.

Dr. Minich's scholarly impact is recognized through:

• 2013-2014 MLA Prize in United States Latina and Chicana Literary and Cultural Studies
• Alba Ortiz Graduate Teaching Award (Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies)
• Lucia, John, and Melissa Gilbert Teaching Excellence Award (Center for Women's and Gender Studies)
• Ana Ixchel Rosal Award (Gender and Sexuality Center)
• Josefina Paredes Endowed Teaching Award (College of Liberal Arts)

She directs inclusive pedagogy through cross-listed courses like Latina Feminism and Health (WGS 340/MAS 337F), Latinx Interdisciplinary Literature (MAS 392/E 395M), and Queer-of-Color Critique (MAS 392/E 393M), fostering collaborative knowledge-building across disciplines while addressing systemic inequities in health and citizenship.