BIOGRAPHY

Alejandrina M. Medina is a PhD candidate in the Integrative Studies program and graduate specialization in Critical Gender Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her primary research is titled, Loudness: The Archival Excess of Show Travesti, which builds a counter-narrative of gender performance that decenters drag as a primary or revolutionary site of LGBTQ nightlife aesthetics. In the work, Medina argues that show travesti, as a transfeminine performance practice of women working “as women” in Latin American cabaret and burlesque theaters, connects queer and trans nightlife economies to transnational feminist politics through the alienated labor of travestis. This project details the long history of show travesti in the wake of military dictatorship and police rule in Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil from the 1970s onward. Her research has been supported by the Trans Studies at the Commons Fellowship in Oral History (University of Kansas) and Sarah Pettit Fellowship in Lesbian Studies (Yale University). Alejandrina’s writing can be found in Sonic Scope: A Journal of Audiovisual Culture, Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, NACLA: Report on the Americas, Contemporary Music Review, and is forthcoming in American Music. She is the guest co-editor for a special issue of Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture on the subject global queer/trans nightlives with Paul David Flood and Christina Misaki Nikitin and serves on the 2026 Feminist Theory & Music program committee.

Alejandrina develops public history efforts to support QTBITPOC performers, scholars, and artists. She co-leads the Black, Indigenous, and Trans of Color Histories Lab, which was generously awarded a $460,000 higher learning grant from the Mellon Foundation in October 2024. She is the co-chair of the graduate student committee of Project Spectrum, a student-led coalition and peer-to-peer professional network aiming at diversifying the music academy. In San Diego, Alejandrina sits on the executive board of Proyecto Trans Latina and engages in direct aid for trans Latinx migrants. This work has been recognized by the Carolyn Applebaum Prize for Community Engagement and Diversity Incentive Program Stipend Award.

You can usually find Alejandrina yearning queerly, singing boleros, or with her cat María Carmen… ideally all three. If you can’t get a hold of her, she’s probably just doing her makeup.