David J. Vázquez (NHC Fellow, 2024–25)

David J. Vázquez is associate professor of critical race, gender, and culture studies and program director of Latina/o/x studies at American University in Washington, DC. He is coeditor of the award-winning volume Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial (Temple, 2019) and the author of Triangulations: Narrative Strategies for Navigating Latino Identity (Minnesota, 2011). He is coeditor of The Molecular Intimacies of Empire, a special forum of The Journal of Transnational American Studies and coeditor of Latinx Outdoor Recreation, a special theme of Diálogo. In addition to his longer pieces, he has published journal articles in Symbolism, American Literary History, Arizona Quarterly, Contemporary Literature, CENTRO, and Latino Studies and contributed to the Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature and Erasing Public Memory: Race, Aesthetics, and Cultural Amnesia in the Americas. In addition to his current affiliations, he is a former director of the Center for Latina/o and Latin American Studies at the University of Oregon and a past fellow at the Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University and at the Oregon Humanities Center at the University of Oregon. His new book, titled Decolonial Environmentalisms: Race, Genre, and Latinx Culture is in production with the University of Texas Press.

Vázquez’s work focuses on the intersections between decolonial environmentalisms, Latinx Studies, and literary and cultural studies. His new work explores the historical resonances of science fiction, including the genre’s explorations of environmental harm, decoloniality, and utopianism.

Selected Publications

• Hsu, Hsuan L, and David J. Vázquez, eds. The Journal of Transnational American Studies 13, no. 1 Special Forum on The Molecular Intimacies of Empire (2022).
• Wald, Sarah D., David J. Vázquez, Priscilla Solis Ybarra, and Sarah Jaquette Ray, eds. Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2019.
• Vázquez, David J. “‘They Don’t Understand Their Own Oppression’: Complicating Preservation in John Rechy’s The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gómez.” Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 74, no. 1 Transnational Cityscapes (Spring 2018): 17–43.
• Vázquez, David J. Triangulations: Narrative Strategies for Navigating Latino Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.