Assistant Professor, Chicano/Latino Studies
School of Social Sciences

Theater and Performance History; Latinx and Black Latinx Literary and Cultural Studies; 19th Century American Literary and Cultural History; Relational Studies of Race and Ethnicity; Disability Studies; Feminist and Queer Theory

Christofer A. Rodelo is a performance and literary historian who examines Latinx expressive cultures in the nineteenth and twentieth century. His research focuses on the role of the spectacular body—as represented in literature, drama, popular culture, and historical memory— in shaping U.S. formations of race, gender, nation, and migration. Trained in American Studies, he uses interdisciplinary methods, including archival research, performance analysis and close literary reading, to reconstruct aesthetic genealogies and situate them within racial formations at national and transnational levels. While rooted in the past, his research highlights the influence of historical performance on contemporary cultural practices and political actions. This work charts new directions for critical race studies scholarship at the intersection of Latinx & Black Latinx Studies, Theater & Performance Studies, and U.S. Literary & Cultural History.

He is currently at work on his first book project. Spectacles of Relation: Race, Performance, and the Latinx Nineteenth Century, illuminates a genealogy and critique of Latinx racialization based on spectacular displays of the body within U.S. performance culture from the 1840s to the early 1900s. It historically indexes 19th century minoritarian aesthetic practices, theorizes the affective and material contours of whiteness, blackness and indigeneity, and rubs together the methodological tenets of literary and performance studies for an archivally-grounded reading of textual, performative, and visual ephemera.

At UC Irvine, he is co-founder and co-director of the Latinx Humanities Research Cluster, a university-wide hub for scholars working in the Latinx humanities at the graduate, postdoctoral, and faculty level. He is also the principal investigator for Latinx Performance Histories, a project that uses digital tools to map and reimagine Latinx performance histories of the past. This initiative has received support from UCI's Center for Liberation, Anti-Racism, and Belonging, Center for Medical Humanities, and most recently, the U.S. Latino Digital Humanities Center. Previously, he was a faculty fellow with the “The Latinx Past: Archive, Memory, Speculation” Working Group, funded by the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

His research has received funding from the American Council of Learned Societies, Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Institute for Citizens and Scholars, Social Science Research Council, University of California Humanities Research Institute, Huntington Library, Harry Ransom Center, Newberry Library, and various sources at Harvard and UC Irvine

Research Awards and Honors (selected):
Manuscript Workshop and Research Development Award, University of California
Humanities Research Institute, 2025-2026
ACLS Fellowship, 2024-2025
Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, Princeton University, 2024-2025
UC Underrepresented Scholars Fellowship, University of California Humanities Research Institute, 2024-2025
Grant-in-Aid, US Latino Digital Humanities and Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, 2024
Short-Term Fellowship, The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 2023
Faculty Fellow, “The Latinx Past: Archive, Memory, Speculation” Working Group, Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, University of Illinois Chicago and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 2023-2024
Faculty Fellow, Center for Liberation, Anti-Racism, and Belonging, UC Irvine, 2023-2024
Honorable Mention, Outstanding Dissertation Award, Latinx Studies Section, Latin American Studies Association, 2023
MMUF Dissertation Grant, Institute for Citizens & Scholars, 2021-2022
Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship 2020-2021
Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin, 2019
Helen Krich Chinoy Dissertation Fellowship, American Society for Theatre Research , 2018
Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, Yale University, 2013

Teaching/Mentoring Awards and Honors (selected):
UCI School of Social Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award for Chicano/Latino Studies 125: Latinx Performance, Spring 2024
UCI School of Social Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award for Chicano/Latino Studies 62: Chicano Studies II, Spring 2024
UCI School of Social Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award for Chicano/Latino Studies 146: Latinx Racial Formations, Winter 2024
Nominee, Outstanding Emerging Faculty Mentorship Latino Excellence and Achievement Dinner (LEAD), UC Irvine, 2024

Christofer A. Rodelo is an assistant professor of Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He earned his Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University in May 2022. His research and teaching interests include performance studies, Latinx studies, and nineteenth-century U.S. literary and cultural history. His book manuscript in progress, Spectacles of Relation: Race, Performance and the Latinx Nineteenth Century, writes a history of Latinx racialization based on spectacular displays of the body within U.S. performance and literary cultures from the 1840s to the early 1900s. His writing appears or is forthcoming in Latino Studies, Transgender Studies Quarterly, TDR/The Drama Review, ESQ, and the edited volume New Directions in Latinx History. During the 2024-2025 academic year, he held an ACLS and Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship at Princeton University.

"How do you solve a problem like Loreta," Transgender Studies Quarterly 13.1 (February 2026)

"Reenacting Latinidad and Remembering Loreta," Latino Studies (Fall 2025)

“Enfreaking Latinidad and the Spectacular Legacy of Julia Pastrana,” accepted publication for “New Directions in Latinx History” edited by Verónica Martinez-Matsuda and Luis Alvarez, Routledge Press

Link to this profile
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=7102

Last updated
08/26/2025