Sociocultural Linguist, Multimodal Anthropologist & Social Justice Educator

ACADEMIC BIO

Dozandri C. Mendoza (they.elle)

My name is Dozandri Mendoza (they.elle) originally from Miami, FL with roots in Cuba and Puerto Rico.


I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Linguistics at the

University of California, Santa Barbara. My interests include language, race, performance, and cuirness and transness in the Caribbean and its diasporas. My current research explores the semiotics of memory/ancestry, colonial tensions of language, verbal art traditions such as shade/reading, and the enregisterment of embodied and danced signs in vogue performance. This work is grounded in a community-based participatory arts frame in collaboration with kiki/Ballroom houses in San Juan, Puerto Rico.


Primary areas: sociocultural linguistics | linguistic anthropology | multimodal anthropology | Black studies | semiotics | coloniality/colonialism | Puerto Rican studies | dance & performance theory | drag & Ballroom


RESEARCH

That /s/ tiene tumbao: Sociophonetics, Racialized Drag, and Miami

This project aims to understand the sociophonetic navigation of ​raciogendered scripts in the sociocultural landscape of Miami drag, ​centered around a group of Latinx (primarily Cuban/Puerto Rican) ​performers in the Wynwood scene.

Related Publications:

  • [Forthcoming, 2024] Mendoza, D. That /s/ tiene tumbao: Chonga-fied Sibilants and the ​Disidentificatory Sociophonetics of Miami Latinx Drag, Gender and Language.

Conejo Semiotics: Cuir Dialogic Intimacy in Bad Bunny’s Performances

A co-authored project with Daniel Vazquez Sanabria looking at intertextual ​links between Bad Bunny’s performances and cuir/trans activism in Puerto ​Rico, accompanied by a critique of focusing on Bad Bunny as a source of ​LGBTQ+ change & autoethnographic writing on trans proprioception.

Related Publications:

  • [Forthcoming, 2024] Mendoza, D. & Vazquez Sanabria, D. Cuir Dialogic Intimacies: ​Mapping Lo Cuir in Bad Bunny’s Performance Repertoire. Book chapter in The Bad ​Bunny Enigma: Culture, Resistance and Uncertainty, Lexington Books.

Current project: Dando Cunt and ​(Duck)Walking with the Transcestrxs: The ​Semiotics of Rican Ballroom Performance

An ongoing participatory arts, visual ethnographic, and ​performance-based project on verbal art, memory, and ​response to colonialism in the Puerto Rican Ballroom scene ​(in archipelagic and diasporic perspective). Funded by the ​SVA/Lemelson Foundation fellowship, and the Performing, ​Visual & Media Arts Award from the IHC at UCSB. ​Forthcoming public-facing writing funded by ​SAPIENS/Wenner-Gren Foundation.

TEACHING

Click on each image to view a sample syllabus of each course.

Instructor of Record,

UC Santa Barbara, Summer 2024

Instructor of Record,

UC Santa Barbara, Summer 2023

Instructor of Record,

UC Santa Barbara, Spring 2023

snapshots from the field

CONTACT INFO

Email Address

doza@ucsb.edu

Current Institution

ORCID

*Communication note: I use the "they/elle" pronoun series to refer to myself in English/Spanish, I also identify as femme, genderfluid, and genderqueer (non-binary also ok).

Twitter

@dozandri