Lázaro Lima

Dr. Lázaro Lima ​is Chair of the Department of Africana, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies and Professor of Latinx studies. His teaching and research analyzes how Latinx cultural, intellectual, and political histories intersect with the discourses of democratic rights, historical memory, and the commons. As an interdisciplinary scholar, he studies how ethnic and racialized public identities are experienced individually, understood collectively, and represented across cultural industries and political communities. His scholarship is fundamentally informed by American Studies methodologies, literary and visual cultural studies, race and ethnic studies, decolonial aesthetics, as well as gender and sexuality studies.

Professor Lima’s books include Being Brown: Sonia Sotomayor and the Latino Question (U of California Press, 2019), Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing, with Felice Picano (U of Wisconsin Press,  2011), and The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory ​(NYU Press, 2007). His work has appeared in popular media, edited volumes, and academic journals including American Literary History, The Journal of Transnational American Studies, Revista Iberoamericana, The Wallace Stevens Journal, A Corracorriente, and many other journals and public humanities outlets. He currently serve on the board of The Journal of Transnational American Studies.
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As a filmmaker, he has served as the co-writer and executive producer of the documentary film Rubí: A DACA Dreamer in Trump’s America (Deronda Productions, 2020) which appeared on PBS and was awarded a BEA “On-Location Documentary Award of Excellence.” His films have been showcased at the Smithsonian Museum of American History’s Warner Brothers Theater, PBS, the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, the Latino Studies Association, Fem Flicks and other venues. He is the founder of The Black and Latinx Sensorium Lab, a multimedia experimental and experiential space for the study of the Brown and Black commons through democracy’s sensoria.

Professor Lima has also received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Library Association, and many other institutions. He is currently the Principal Investigator for the project “Black and Latinx Practices of Freedom: Methods, Archives, Pedagogies” (2022-2023), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s “Black Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative” (BRESI) at CUNY. His website can be found at lazarolima.com.