Wanda Alarcón, Ph.D.
Wanda Alarcón is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona. She specializes in Chicana/o/x literary and cultural studies, Latinx sound studies, and decolonial feminism. Her research takes up sound as a generative site and method for hearing and amplifying resistant grammars in Chicana narratives. She is currently working on her first book manuscript, “Chicana Soundscapes,” which examines the writings of four contemporary Chicana authors. Listening closely to poetry, fiction, drama, and memoir she tunes into sound, noise, language, songs, echoes, and silences and proposes decolonial feminist ways of hearing Chicana and queer Chicana worlds.
Dr. Alarcón is involved in several research projects in Latinx sound studies, locally and nationally. At the U of A she co-directs the Latinx Soundscapes Research Working Group. She was awarded a Confluencenter Mellon-Fronteridades Faculty Fellowship (2023-2024) for her research project: “Amplifying Chicana Soundscapes: Tuning into Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera.” She was a featured speaker in the Sounding Latinx Webinar Series at University of Illinois where she gave the talk, “Listening to Chicana Literature.” Her article, “Latina/o/x Soundscapes,” co-written with Dr. Susana Sepulveda, is forthcoming in Oxford Research Bibliographies in Latina/o Studies and her chapter, “Listening to Anzaldúa’s Sueño con Serpientes,” will appear in a new edited volume on Latinx Sound Studies.
Dr. Alarcón received her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality from UC Berkeley (2016). At Berkeley she studied with Dr. Laura Pérez, Dr. Beth Piatote, Dr. Paola Bacchetta, Dr. Jennifer Stoever, and Dr. Abdul JanMohamed. Her dissertation is titled, “Sounding Aztlán: Music, Literature, and the Chicana/o Sonic Imaginary.” She earned an M.A. in English from Binghamton University where she studied with Dr. María Lugones and Dr. Joseph Keith. She earned a B.A. in Music with a Minor in French from California State University, Long Beach. She was a Carlos E. Castañeda Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Mexican American Studies at UT Austin (2016-2017). She also held Lecturer appointments at UC Santa Cruz and UCLA before joining the faculty in GWS.
Dr. Alarcón is a first-generation Chicana scholar. She was born and raised in East Los Angeles, California.
Selected Publications
Alarcón, Wanda. “'Ten dyke marches all over L.A.': A Conversation with Judy Ornelas Sisneros." Journal of Lesbian Studies, 2022. Vol. 26, No. 3
Alarcón, Wanda. “Reading and Remembering Butch-Femme Worlds.” Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, 2020, Vol. 14, Issue 2.
Alarcón, Wanda. “Butchlalis de Panochtitlan.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Oxford University Press. Article published February 2020. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.345.
Alarcón, Wanda. “‘Oh how so East L.A.’: The Sound of 80s Flashbacks in Chicana Literature.” SoundingOut!: The Sound Studies Blog. 10 September 2017. Web. https://soundstudiesblog.com/2017/09/10/oh-how-so-east-l-a-the-sound-of-...
Alarcón, W., Cruz, C., Guardia Jackson, L., Prieto, L., Rodriguez-Arroyo, S. “Compartiendo Nuestras Historias: Five Testimonios of Schooling and Survival.” Critical Readings On Latinos and Education: Tools, Themes, and Solutions. Ed. Enrique G. Murillo Jr. Routledge, 2019.
Dissertations
Susana Sepulveda, "Travesando Chicana Punk," 2023.
Courses Taught
Undergraduate
Gender, Identity, and Power
Gender in a Transitional World
Feminist Theories
Latinx Pop Culture
U.S. Third World Feminisms
Graduate
Feminist Theories
Feminist Knowledge and Methods