Join the Department of English for a talk with David J. Vázquez. More details coming soon!
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David J. Vázquez is Professor of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies and Director of the Latina/o/x Studies Program. He teaches courses on comparative Latina/o/x literature and culture, comparative ethnic American cultures, critical race theory, environmental justice, ecocriticism, and 20th Century U.S. Literature.
He is the author of Decolonial Environmentalisms: Climate Justice and Speculative Futurity in Latinx Cultural Production (Texas 2025). Decolonial Environmentalisms argues that the mainstream environmental movement is implicated in racial capitalism, not least through its ignorance of environmental justice as it pertains to Latinx people. Through close readings of eco-minded novels, films, visual art, and short stories by Chicanx, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban American, Peruvian, and Central American culture makers, Vázquez surfaces diverse Latinx visions for an equitable and sustainable humanity. His first book, Triangulations: Narrative Strategies for Navigating Latino Identity (Minnesota 2011), explores how Latina/o authors in late twentieth-century America employ the coordinates of ideas of self in autobiographical texts to find their way to new, complex identities. Vázquez's other publications have appeared in the journals American Literary History, Symbolism, Latino Studies, CENTRO, The Journal of Transnational American Studies, and in the collections, the Routledge Companion to Latina/o Literature (Routledge, 2012) and Erasing Public Memory: Race, Aesthetics and Cultural Amnesia in the Americas (Mercer, 2007).
Vázquez is currently working on several new single-authored and collaborative projects. His new book project, tentatively titled "Days of Futures Past: Latinx Science Fiction and Speculative Futurity," received the William C. and Ida Friday Fellowship at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.