Dr. Dora Santana

Biography

Dora Silva Santana is an artist scholar and Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender & Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently working on a book tentatively titled 'Iconica: Transing Afro Diasporic Signs,' which argues that the images and narratives of Black trans people populate art and media and correspond with transformative living and meanings that have been dislocated or erased by colonialism. Her research draws on multisited visual archives and includes critical memoir passages along with translinguistic sources from the African diaspora, primarily focusing on the Global South. Her notable peer-reviewed articles include 'Mais Viva! Reassembling Blackness, Transness and Feminism' published in TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly and 'Transitionings Re-turnings: Experiments in Poetics Across Transatlantic Waters,' exploring the intersections of Blackness, trans identities, and feminism in various cultural contexts.

Research Interests