Photo by Apolo Gomez
Francisco J. Galarte is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Director of the Feminist Research Institute at the University of New Mexico. He teaches courses in Chicanx, Latinx, and transgender studies. He was born and raised in Brawley, California, in the Imperial Valley along the US/Mexico Border. He identifies strongly as a transfronterizo, meaning the borderlands inform his creative and scholarly projects. His most recent articles have appeared in publications including Aztlan: Journal of Chicano Studies, Chicana/Latina Studies Journal, and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. He holds a PhD in Educational Policy Studies with a minor in Latina and Latino Studies from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. Before arriving at the University of New Mexico, he was an assistant professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona. While at the University of Arizona, he was a member of the Transgender Studies Research Cluster (TSRC) at the University of Arizona, a collective of faculty that is the first of its kind in the world that brings together scholars in Transgender Studies from various disciplinary backgrounds to foster cross-collaboration in the form of research, writing, and teaching.
He has been involved with TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly since the journal’s inception in 2011. He served as the Fashion Editor from 2012 to 2018 and has served as co-general executive editor since 2018. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly is published by Duke University Press and is the only journal in Transgender Studies.
His research brings transgender studies, Chicanx studies, Latinx studies, and queer studies into critical dialogue. In doing so, he expands these academic fields, transforms the central issues of inquiry, and contributes to ongoing conversations related to the study of race, gender, and sexuality. His primary scholarly agenda is to examine the relationship between systems of racial formation and the lived experiences and cultural representations of racialized transgendered subjects.
His first book, Brown Trans Figurations: Rethinking Race, Gender and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies (University of Texas Press, 2021), was the inaugural book for the Latinx: The Future is Now book series edited by Nicole Guidotti-Hernández and Lorgia Garcia-Peña. The book explores how transgender analytics intervene or fail to intervene in the current reading practices that exist in Chicana/o Studies for making sense of processes of racialization, gendered violence, queer sexualities, masculinities, and femininities. Brown Trans Figurations: Rethinking Race, Gender and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies (University of Texas Press, 2021), which was awarded the Allan Bray Memorial Book Prize by the MLA GL/Q Caucus (2022), the John Leo and Dana Heller Award by the Popular Culture Association (2022), and the Book of the Year Award by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (2022).
He recently began working on a second book project tentatively entitled Dolorous Gender: The Problem of Chicanx/Latinx Femininities and Masculinities.
