About
Professor Calvo-Quirós’ research and teaching is all about connections and intersections between the multidisciplinary fields of Design, Aesthetics and Space with Latina/o Chicana/o Studies. His early work focused on car subcultures, race, and class and how cars manifest American values and anxieties. In particular, he studied lowrider car customizations and their use of color and design methodologies. He explored lowrider car aesthetics as part of a visual language linked to Chicana/o Latina/o oral traditions and the struggles against discourses of aesthetic regulation and normalization in the American Southwest.
His most recent research titled "Insatiable Appetites: Transborder Monsters, Saints, and Sinners" investigates the U.S. - Mexico border region during the twentieth century, not only as a sociopolitical space of conflict and struggle, but simultaneously as a 2,000-mile strip of "haunted" land, inhabited by many imaginary creatures and fantastic tales. He uses a variety of primary sources, including government juridical proceedings, literary and cultural products, (e.g. corridos, murals, art, etc.), as well as interviews and ethnographic visits to popular shrines in order to study border folk saints and monsters. He approaches these tales and fantastic entities as sophisticated community archives and cultural productions that unveil the sociopolitical and economic struggles experienced along the border in the last hundred years, especially in the context of the post cold war years, the signing of NAFTA, and the events of Sept 11, 2001.
Professor Calvo-Quirós interests also include Chicana/o Latina/o feminist, queer de-colonial methodologies and spiritualities, as well as the explorations of the power of empathy and forgiveness to formulate new racial, gender, and sensual discourses in America. You can find more about his research and teaching at Barriology.com
Research Areas of Interest: aesthetics and cultural studies, critical race theory, gender and sexuality, ethnography research and theory, decolonial methods and theory
Affiliations:
Core Faculty: Program in Latina/o Studies (LS)
Professor Calvo Quirós holds a joint appointment in the LSA Department of American Culture (AC) and by Courtesy in the Stamps School of Art and Design
Selected Publications:
Academic articles:
2016 Calvo-Quirós, William A. “The Emancipatory Power of the Imaginary: Defining Chican@ Speculative Productions.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 41, no. 1 (Spring 2016). 155 – 170.
2014 Calvo-Quirós, William A. “Sal Castro: Thank You Maestro.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 39, no. 2 (Fall 2014). 155-165.
2014 Calvo-Quirós, William A. “Chupacabras: The Strange Case of Carlos Salinas de Gortari and his Transformation into the Chupatodo.” InCrossing the Borders of the Imagination, edited by María del Mar Ramón Torrijos, 95-108. Madrid, Spain: Instituto Franklin de Estudios Norteamericanos, Universidad de Alcalá, Spring 2014.
2014 Calvo-Quirós, William A. “The Aesthetics of Healing and Love: An Epistemic Genealogy of Jota/o Aesthetic Traditions.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 39, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 181-194
2013 Calvo-Quirós, William A. “The Politics of Color: Chromophobia, Chromo-Eugenics, and the Epistemologies of Taste.” Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS) 13, no. 1 (Fall 2013): 76-116.
Chapters on anthologies:
2016 Calvo-Quirós, William A. “Liberanos de todo mal/But Deliver Us from Evil: Latin@ Monsters Theory and the Outlining of our Phantasmaboric Landscapes.” The Routledge Handbook of Latino Pop Culture, ed. Frederick Aldama. 381 – 393.
2014 Calvo-Quirós, William A. “Sucking Vulnerability: Neo Liberalism, the Chupacabras, and the Post Cold-War Years.” InThe Un/Making of Latina/o Citizenship: Culture, Politics & Aesthetics. Ed. Ellie D. Hernández and Eliza Rodriguez Gibson. University of Indiana Press. Fall 2014.
2007 Calvo-Quirós, William A. “Driving the Streets of Aztlán: Low ’n Slow.” In One Hundred Years of Loyalty in Honor of Luis Leal/Cien Años de Lealtad en Honor a Luis Leal Vol. II, edited by Sara Poot Herrera, Francisco A. Lomelí and María Sobek-Herrera, 1115-1134. Mexico City: University of California, Santa Barbara, 2007.
Co-edited Academic Journal Editions or Dossiers:
2014 Garcia, Mario, and William A. Calvo-Quirós. “Sal Castro — A Teacher.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. 39: 2 (Fall 2014). 130-175.
