Leticia Robles-Moreno

A few years ago I found myself with a background in Literature and Theatre Arts, investigating socially and politically engaged creative processes, but feeling constrained by the limits of the written word. I was looking for a more expansive field that would include alternative knowledges and would give the body a central role in thinking about cultural products. Without knowing it, I was looking for Performance Studies! I discovered the department through the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics website, where I fell in love with Diana Taylor’s work and her research throughout the Americas. Wanting to learn more, I found the work of André Lepecki, Deb Kapchan, José Muñoz, and a whole amazing faculty that opened a new world for me. From that point onward, I have felt part of a community of thinkers and doers, who are able to write beautifully about urgent matters in arts, society, and politics, without removing themselves from the vitality of that which inspires their work. This is what Performance Studies taught me from the beginning: think, learn, do, and don’t stop doing, to keep thinking and learning.

Being physically away from my hometown, Performance Studies offered me the opportunity to investigate presences and absences, crucial to the process of remembering the thousands of desaparecidos in Latin America. With my MA thesis, I explored the ways in which new technologies might be used to generate alternative political subjects, communities, and spaces of belonging. My doctoral research focuses on what I always wanted to write about – collective creative processes on performance and politics –, but now in close collaboration with the artists who offer their bodies as vehicles of knowledge. Given the artistic vitality of New York City, Performance Studies is a hub for artists, scholars, and activists from across the Americas and the rest of the world. Having them close to home is inspirational, refreshing, and yet another reminder that we are constantly growing in each encounter.

During the 2017-2018 academic year, Leticia Robles-Moreno (Ph.D. '17) will be Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre & Dance at Muhlenberg College. Muhlenberg's Theatre & Dance Department aims to create an environment in which actors, dancers, and designers become thinkers and artists. The curriculum intertwines the artistic discipline and training of an intense studio program, and the intellectual rigor and scholarly breadth of a first-class liberal arts college. With its emphasis on exploration and collaboration, the Theatre Program at Muhlenberg offers extensive opportunities in musical theatre and dance, and encourages students to participate in the Department's award-winning productions.

Leticia will join the Theatre & Dance’s Performance Studies concentration offering classes on race theory, intersectional feminisms, memory and affect studies, and performance and politics in the Americas. The Performance Studies concentration investigates the human body engaged in symbolic action, using ideas from the performing arts, cultural anthropology, gender studies, oral history, and other related disciplines. Muhlenberg’s curriculum examines performing arts such as theatre, dance, performance art, and music, but also inquires into cultural performances like political protests, fashion shows, sporting events, and worship services. The concentration reveals how performances form community and shape identity with material consequences for performers and audience members alike.

Theatre, performance, and politics; affect studies; network theories and practices; intersectional feminism; memory studies in Latin American post-conflict contexts; critical digital studies as means to generate transcollectivities; becoming collective

Since the arrival of her son Nicolás, Leticia has experienced an enrichment of her academicwork, along with they joy of little hands reaching for heartwarming embraces. Affective labor, Equal Pay Rights, race relations, migration debates, and the formation of transnational subjectivities in a globalized world hit close home, reenergizing her commitment to research that resonates with political activism and public feelings. She considers herself a proud member of the Academic Mommas Force.