Sociocultural Linguist, Multimodal Anthropologist & Social Justice Educator
ACADEMIC BIO
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 transness in
the Caribbean and its diasporas. My current research
explores the semiotics of memory/transcestry, colonial
tensions of language, verbal art traditions such as
shade/reading, and the enregisterment of embodied
and danced signs in the Ballroom scene. 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 | trans
studies | Black studies | semiotics |
coloniality/colonialism | Puerto Rican studies | dance
& performance theory | drag & Ballroom
Dozandri C. Mendoza (they.elle)
RESEARCH
Related Publications:
- (2024) Mendoza, D. That /s/ tiene tumbao: Chonga-fied Sibilants and the
Disidentificatory Sociophonetics of Miami Latinx Drag, Gender and Language.
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) non-binary and gender non-conforming performers in the Wynwood scene.
That /s/ tiene tumbao: Sociophonetics, Racialized Drag, and Miami
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
trans performatic responses 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
and audio documentary work funded by SAPIENS/Wenner-
Gren Foundation.
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.
Conejo Semiotics: Cuir Dialogic Intimacy in Bad Bunny’s Performances
Related Publications:
- (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.
snapshots from the field
CONTACT INFO
doza@ucsb.edu
Email Address
Current Institution
@dozandri
*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).