Bio

Claudia Sofía Garriga-López is an assistant professor of queer and trans Latinx studies in the Department of Multicultural and Gender Studies of California State University, Chico.  As an Arts Research with Communities of Color Fellow, she will conduct a year-long ethnographic research project with the San Juan-based Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico. She has a PhD in American studies from New York University. She is working on her book manuscript titled Gender for All. She conducted long-term participatory research with trans, feminist, and queer activists and artist groups in Quito, Ecuador, and is currently researching transfeminism’s emergence in Puerto Rico. Garriga-López is the author of “Transfeminist Crossroads: Reimagining the Ecuadorian State” published in TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly (2016), and is also one of the coeditors for the “Trans Studies en las Américas” issue of TSQ (2019). Her scholarship and visual art have been featured in several publications, including Sinister Wisdom, the Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History, and Latinas: Struggles and Protest in Twenty-First Century USA. Her scholarly work is grounded in a critical engagement with activism, public policy, and public health, as well as trans, feminist, and queer performance art and cultural production in Latin America, the Caribbean, and within people of color communities in the United States.

Claudia Sofía Garriga-López and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC) are developing an organizational history of the MAC en el Barrio, a program that hires local artists to develop artistic projects with local community members in towns all over Puerto Rico. Dr. Garriga-López is conducting participant observation and interviews with MAC staff, artists, and community members who have participated in the programming of MAC en el Barrio, as well as archival research. Her findings will be published in a collection of essays in celebration of the tenth year anniversary of MAC en el Barrio.