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 current research project, Latina Loudness: Staging Show Travesti and Other Insurgent Nightlives bridges sound studies, trans studies, and critical theory to produce the first monograph-length survey of show travesti. Show travesti, the transfeminine performance practice of women working “as women” in Latin American cabaret and burlesque theaters, connects insurgent nightlife economies to transnational Black and Latina 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), Sarah Pettit Fellowship in Lesbian Studies (Yale University), International Institute (UCSD), Black Studies Project (UCSD), and Tyler Center for Global Studies (UCSD). 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 American Music. She is the guest co-editor of “Partying on the Periphery: Global Queer/Trans Nightlives,” a special issue of Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture (vol. 32, 2027) with Paul David Flood and Christina Misaki Nikitin. Her future research projects include an ethnography of Black travesti sound artists/rappers working in the global art market at the Bienal de São Paulo, a history of the aural diagnostic category of dysphonia (treated by vocal feminization surgery), and she is currently in the early stages of a special issue on trans music/sound at Transgender Studies Quarterly .
Alejandrina can usually be found yearning, singing boleros, or DJing for her cat and dog. If you can’t get a hold of her, she’s probably doing her makeup.
Alejandrina M. Medina 