Dr. Xiomara Verenice Cervantes-Gómez

[Faculty photo shows a brown Latina woman in neutral makeup with shoulder-length curly black hair and blonde highlights. The photo has a navy background, while she is seated in a black and white printed blouse.]

Dr. Xiomara Verenice Cervantes-Gómez is a transdisciplinary performance, queer, and trans theorist, who researches and writes in the interstices between Latin American and U.S. Latinx cultural studies, continental philosophy, performance studies, queer theory, and contemporary literature. She is the author of Bottoms Up: Queer Latinx Exposure (NYU Press, under contract). Cervantes-Gómez is currently Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese in Latin American literatures and cultures and holds faculty affiliations across disciplines including the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, Latina/Latino Studies, The Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies, Religion, and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. She earned her Ph.D. in Spanish and Latin American Studies in the Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture Doctoral Program at the University of Southern California. She also holds a master's degree in Religions of the Americas and Theology from Harvard Divinity School and a B.A. from the University of California, Riverside.

Prior to the University of Illinois, Cervantes-Gómez held both predoctoral and postdoctoral positions at Harvard University and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Cervantes-Gómez's contributions to the disciplines have included recently serving on the editorial board of Women & Language, as co-chair of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Sexualities Studies Section, and holding leadership positions at the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA). She currently serves on the executive committee of The Mexican LLC Forum of the Modern Languages Association (MLA).

Complementing her research, Cervantes-Gómez is also a performance artist who has presented creative work at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, Foro Tecuicanime in Mexico City, Harvard Divinity School, streaming platforms, conferences, and various showcases in Mexico City and Los Angeles.