I hold a Ph.D. in Romance Studies from Cornell University (1998); an M.A. in English Literature from Bucknell University (1992); and a B.A. in Music Performance (Flute) from the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid, Spain (1990). My research focuses on contemporary Spanish narrative and film, cultural studies, immigration studies, and queer theory. I am the author of the book Queer Transitions in Contemporary Spanish Culture: From Franco to la movida (SUNY Press 2007) and the guest editor, with Brenna Munro, of a special issue of S&F Online on the topic of “Thinking Queer Activism Transnationally.” I am currently completing a second book, “Transnational Queer Affects, Homonormativity, and Immigration in Contemporary Spanish Culture,” which illuminates and subjects to an interdisciplinary critique the Spanish government’s strong support for LGBT “homonormative” rights as it simultaneously implements conservative, racist immigration policies directed at brown and black immigrant bodies from North and Sub-Saharan Africa. In this book, I analyze attempts at “pinkwashing” in Spain and I show how the contradictions inherent in the intersection of this agenda with anti-immigration attitudes are addressed in the work of progressive writers and visual artists who nevertheless represent queer and immigration issues with a disturbing degree of ambivalence. I also am working on a third book project, “Queer In/Visibilities: Literary and Visual Public Interventions in Twenty-First Century Spain,” in which I study the intersection of literary, visual, and activist discourses and transnational mobilizations in Spain around the passing of Law 13/2005 of July 1, 2005, which legalized same-sex marriage, and Law 3/2007 of March 15, 2007, which allowed transgender citizens to change their genders and names in the National Registry without proof of sex-reassignment surgery. I examine important literary, theoretical, and visual art works that engage both in significant aesthetic innovations and in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activism around the time of the passing of these laws. I focus specifically on works that depict or were actually created through affective transnational connections (be it among activists, writers, or artists) among Spaniards and Latin Americans and/or US-Latinos/as—connections that lead to new activist strategies and greater political awareness, but also to forms of aesthetic experimentation. I analyze especially the works of those LGBT visual artists and writers who were directly engaged in activism at the turn of this century. My research has appeared in Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, Revista Iberoamericana, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform; Michigan Journal of Race & Law; Hispamérica; The Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies; Letras Femeninas; and several essay collections. I was a 2009-2010 founding Fellow at University of Miami’s Center for the Humanities and has received numerous grants to conduct research at archives in Spain and the USA. I teache literary theory and Spanish literature and culture courses for her department at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and Queer Studies courses for undergraduates at the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program.