SUSANISIMA

Susana Vargas Cervantes is an interdisciplinary scholar, internationally recognized for her artistic and academic work at the intersections of alternative criminology, visual studies, and queer studies—in both Anglo North America and Latin America. Her research mines the connections between gender, sexuality, class, and skin tonalities to reconceptualize pigmentocracy as a system of perception.

She is the author of the book The Little Old Lady Killer: The Sensationalized Crimes of Mexico's First Female Serial Killer (NYU Press, 2019) and Mujercitos (Editorial RM, 2015). After a Fulbright Visiting Fellowship at Columbia University, she joined Carleton University as an Assistant Professor in Communication and Media Studies.

︎ MORE

BOOKS

︎ The Little Old Lady Killer

NYU Press, 2019

︎ Mujercitos

Editorial RM, 2015

︎ Aprehendiendo al delincuente

UNAM-McGill, 2011

WRITINGS

︎ Scholarly
︎ Essays

SPEAKING

︎ Podcasts
︎ Text Interviews
︎ Presentations

CURATORIAL

︎ TATE BRITAIN

Stan Firm inna Inglan

︎ JUMEX MUSEUM

En Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni

︎ CCE

Lo que se ve no se pregunta

OTHER PROJECTS

︎ Mesas de Diálogo

︎ Queering curatorial practices
︎ Seven to Eleven dreams

︎ A life in a liminal space

ABOUT

WRITINGS

Scholarly

︎“Pigmentocracy and the performance of whiteness in contemporary photography: Yvonne Venegas’s San Pedro Garza and Dana Lixenberg’s United States.” Feminist Media Studies (2022).

︎“Agentividad queer desde Latino América” Desacatos. Revista de Ciencias Sociales 65 (2021): 218-22.

︎“Alarma! Mujercitos performing gender in 1970s Mexico” Transgender Studies Quarterly Duke 1, no. 4 (2014): 552-558

︎ “Saliendo del clóset: ¿gay, maricón o queer?” in La Memoria y el deseo. Estudios gay y queer en México. Ed. Rodrigo Parrini y Alejandro Brito. México City: PUEG. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, (2014 )151-175

︎ “El que ríe al ultimo, ríe mejor: Mujercitos en la nota roja en México durante los años 70” in Aprehendiendo al delincuente: sociedad y medios en Norteamérica. Ed. Martínez Zalce Graciela, Will Straw and Susana Vargas Cervantes. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México y Media@McGill. Mexico City, 2011.

︎ “Retablos: emociones, afectos y cuerpos en subversión” Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios sobre Cuerpos, Emociones, y Sociedad 4 (2011).

︎ “Performing Mexicanidad: Criminality and Lucha Libre” Crime, Media and Culture 6, no.2 (2010): 185- 203.