Elena L'Annunziata Monge

Carmen Elena L’Annunziata Monge (she/her/ella) is a PhD candidate in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona with a minor in Geography. Her research interests include Cultural Studies, Transnational Feminisms, Queer of Color Critique, Postcolonial/Decolonial Theory, Migration Studies, Chicanx/Latinx Studies, Political Ecology and Food Sovereignty.

Her dissertation, “Scenes of Separation,” is an interdisciplinary cultural studies project that examines the role of affect in the separation of children from their families and extended kinship networks. Focusing on an array of cultural forms including film, literature, and policy, her research demonstrates how cultural products simultaneously mobilize racialized discourses of family deviancy while also circulating affects of compassion for children in ways that lend legitimacy to the state sanctioned removal of children from families deemed outside of—or other to—the nation.

She has presented her research at numerous national conferences including the American Studies Association (ASA) and Cultural Studies Association (CSA) and has published in the Humboldt Journal of Social Relations. She received her B.A. in Critical Gender studies with a minor in Ethnic Studies from the University of California San Diego, and her M.A. in Political Science, Environment and Community from Humboldt State University.