Karma R. Chávez
Associate Professor — Ph.D., Arizona State University
Department Chair and Associate Professor
Contact
- E-mail: karma.chavez@utexas.edu
- Phone: (512) 232-6888
- Office: GWB 2.102F
- Office Hours: by appointment
- Campus Mail Code: F9200
Biography
My scholarship is primarily informed by queer of color theory and women of color feminism. Methodologically, I am a rhetorical critic who utilizes textual and field-based methods. I am interested in studying social movement building, activist rhetoric, and coalitional politics. My work emphasizes the rhetorical practices of groups marginalized within existing power structures, but I also attend to rhetoric produced by powerful institutions and actors about marginalized folks and the systems that oppress them (e.g., immigration system, prisons etc.).
In 2013, I published my first book, Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities, which examines coalition building at the many intersections of queer and immigration politics in the contemporary United States. In 2019, I published a book of interviews I conducted related to Palestine while hosting a radio show on WORT-FM in Madison, Wisconsin. That book is called Palestine on the Air.
I have co-edited four volumes, Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of Illegalization, Detention, and Deportation (with Eithne Luibhéid, U of Illinois Press), Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies (with the Feminist Editorial Collective: other members are: Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Aren Z. Aizura, Aimee Bahng, Mishuana Goeman, and Amber Jamilla Musser, NYU Press), Standing in the Intersection: Feminist Voices, Feminist Practices in Communication Studies (with Cindy L. Griffin, SUNY Press) and Text + Field: Innovations in Rhetorical Method (Penn State University Press). My latest authored book, The Borders of AIDS: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance was released from the University of Washington Press in June 2021. The Borders of AIDS centers citizenship and immigration status to tell a story about how HIV/AIDS became an opportunity for powerful people in the US to enact "alienizing logic" against migrants, Black folks, and others. It also shows how people fought back.
With M. Adams, I am working on a collection of essays about our community-university collaborations in Madison, Wisconsin called, After Ferguson: Black, Queer, Feminist Experiments Against Police and Jails. Links to copies of much of my academic writing are here.
In addition to my research, I am a regular host of two UT podcasts, the Latino Studies podcast, LatinXperts and LGBTQ Studies podcast, Audio QT. You can also hear me occasionally hosting A Public Affair on Madison, Wisconsin's community radio station, WORT-FM.
