Lázaro Lima is a professor in the Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies at Hunter College. A scholar and documentary film-maker, his work focuses on the political, historical, juridical and cultural industries that enable Latino democratic legibility and participation to emerge in civil society.
Lima’s books include The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory (NYU Press, 2007), Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing, with Felice Picano (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), and Being Brown: Sonia Sotomayor and the Latino Question (University of California Press, 2019). His documentary film-work, in partnership Carrie Brown, focuses on the Latina educational equity gap and includes the films Las mujeres: Latina Lives, American Dreams (Deronda Productions, 2016) and the award-winning Rubí: A DACA Dreamer in Trump’s America (Deronda Productions, 2019).
Lima is the recipient of grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Library Association and many other institutions. His research, scholarship and creative work has appeared in the popular press, edited volumes, and academic journals including American Literary History, The Journal of Transnational American Studies, Revista Iberoamericana, A Corracorriente, The Wallace Stevens Journal (WSJ) and many other journals and public humanities venues. Lima currently serves on the board of The Journal of Transnational American Studies.