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. Medina’s dissertation, “Latina Loudness: Transfeminine Excess in las Américas” draws from Marxian theories of alienation and aesthetic speculation to examine transfeminine performance in the US, Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil; the project argues for loudness as an aesthetic category that sounds material histories of hemispheric racialized gender. Her dissertation research has been supported by the International Institute, Black Studies Project, Tyler Center for Global Studies, and Sarah Pettit Fellowship in Lesbian Studies at 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, and forthcoming in Contemporary Music Review. She will also be guest editing a special issue of Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture on global queer/trans nightlives with Paul David Flood and Christina Misaki Nikitin.

Alejandrina also works in advocacy and 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 2024. Additionally, she co-chairs the graduate student committee of Project Spectrum, a student-led coalition 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.