Alejandro Múnera, PhD Candidate in Hispanic Languages & Literatures, was awarded the 2025 Philip Brett LGBT Studies Fellowship!
The Philip Brett LGBT Fund is an endowment established in 2009 by members and friends of the UC Berkeley campus community to support graduate students working in LGBT Studies. It provides a monetary award to a UC Berkeley graduate student, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, conducting research related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or queer studies in any field or discipline.
Alejandro's dissertation project is titled "Vital Signs: The Aesthetics of Sexual Politics in Latin America." It rewrites the histories of LGBT+, feminist, and sexual liberation movements in Brazil and Colombia over the last three decades of the twentieth century by examining the diverse practices and public impact of lesser-known figures and artistic collectives. As the title suggests, amid the ongoing struggle against precarity, political repression, urban violence, and the loss caused by the HIV/AIDS crisis, LGBT-Queer artists and activists in Latin America developed a highly experimental use of media that harnessed the vitality of sexuality –its life-altering effects and world-building capabilities– to challenge long-standing religious, medical, and moral paradigms that chastised feminine, trans, and queer bodies. Through an interdisciplinary and transregional approach that combines close reading with material and visual analysis of print media sources, archival ephemera, and photography, Vital Signs explores the genealogies of the LGBT+ and second-wave feminist movements in both Portuguese and Spanish-speaking communities by studying fanzines, comics, pornographic works, installations, and performances. It particularly emphasizes the contributions of León Zuleta (co-founder of the Homosexual Liberation Movement in Colombia), Miguel Ángel Rojas (Colombian contemporary artist), and the collective, unruly practices of the Movimento de Arte Pornô in Brazil, led by visual artist Eduardo Kac.
Congratulations, Alejandro!