Profile
Dozandri C. Mendoza is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). They teach courses on the structure of English, sociolinguistics, language and embodiment, and language, gender, race, and sexuality.
As a sociocultural linguist at the intersection of dance studies/dance anthropology, Puerto Rican Studies, Black Studies, and semiotics, they are passionate about curating creative research-based interventions with students through their pedagogy and research projects. Their classes engage students in photographic, performatic, and sonic methods to researching sociolinguistic variation and sociolinguistic power.
Their research agenda is grounded in community-based participatory arts research in collaboration with the kiki/Ballroom scene in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Their work explores the semiotics of memory/ancestry, colonial tensions of language, verbal art traditions such as throwing shade/reading, and the enregisterment of embodied and danced signs in vogue performance. They also think about how dance and performance can be profound sites through which to examine the effects of and resistance to colonialism, empire, and race/class/gender-based oppression inspired by their time collaborating/walking in kiki/Ballroom spaces. Their work has been supported by fellowships from the Center for LGBTQ+ Studies, Society for Visual Anthropology, and SAPIENS Magazine/Wenner-Gren Foundation.
Dozandri’s published work has appeared in Gender and Language, The Bad Bunny Enigma: Culture, Resistance, and Uncertainty (Lexington Press), SAPIENS Magazine, and Penn Working Papers in Linguistics.