Christofer A. Rodelo

Biography

Christofer A. Rodelo, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is also a Ford Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts and Effron Center for the Study of America (2024-2025). Rodelo's research examines race, spectacle, and performance in the nineteenth-century United States, with particular attention to Black-Brown relationality and the formation of Latinx racial identities. His dissertation, "Exhibiting Black and Brown: Race, Spectacle, and the Archive of Latinx Performance," received Honorable Mention for the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Latinx Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association in 2023. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University in 2022.

Rodelo has been awarded fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (2024-2025), the Ford Foundation (2020-2021 and 2024-2025), and the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program. His research has also been supported by the Huntington Library, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Newberry Library. He is developing a digital humanities project, "Latinx Performance Histories," which uses computational methods to uncover and visualize nineteenth-century Latinx performance cultures in the United States.

Rodelo's scholarship appears in journals including TDR: The Drama Review, Latino Studies, Transgender Studies Quarterly, and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. His book manuscript, "Spectacles of Relation: Race, Performance, and the Latinx Nineteenth Century," is currently under review. At UC Irvine, he teaches courses on Latinx racial formations, performance, and Chicano/Latino studies. He co-founded and co-directs the UCI Latinx Humanities Research Cluster and serves as a Faculty Ally for the First Gen First Quarter Initiative in the School of Social Sciences.

Education

• Ph.D. in American Studies, Harvard University, 2022
• A.M. in English, Harvard University, 2017
• B.A. in American Studies and Ethnicity, Race, & Migration, Yale University, 2015

Distinctions

• Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, Princeton University, 2024-2025
• Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, 2020-2021
• American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship, 2024-2025
• Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, Yale University, 2013
• Honorable Mention, Outstanding Dissertation Award, Latinx Studies Section, Latin American Studies Association, 2023
• Faculty Fellow, The Latinx Past: Archive, Memory, Speculation Working Group, Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 2023-2024
• The Archive: Theory, Form, Practice Graduate Fellowship, Newberry Library and Andrew Mellon Foundation, 2018
• Prize Fellowship, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, 2015-2021
• Helen Krich Chinoy Dissertation Fellowship, American Society for Theatre Research, 2018
• Short-Term Fellowship, The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 2023-2024