Laura Grappo is Assistant Professor of American Studies and affiliate faculty in the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. Her research and teaching address the fields of queer theory, Latina/o Studies, and cultural and political theory. This fall, she is on fellowship at the Wesleyan Center for the Humanities, where she is teaching a seminar on queer necropolitics and completing her book manuscript. Entitled, Revenant Bodies: Sites of Queer Alterity and Racial Estrangement in Contemporary Latinidad, the book examines instances of violence and performances of identity across a range of cultural narratives, belief systems, and legal dictums, with particular focus on the experiences of Latina/o peoples.
Professor Grappo is a Wesleyan Alumna, and received her Ph.D. from Yale University. Her dissertation, entitled, Home and Other Myths: A Lexicon of Queer Inhabitation, considered literal and figurative sites of dispossession experienced by queer subjects in the US, concentrating on intersections between race, poverty, and sexual difference. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the Larry Kramer Institute for Gay and Lesbian Studies at Yale University. Her work has been presented at the American Studies Association, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, and the Northeast Modern Language Association, among other locations.
At Wesleyan, Professor Grappo currently serves as the faculty-student liaison for the American Studies majors’ committee, as a Mellon Mays Faculty Mentor, and as a member of the pre-orientation program for first generation college students held through the Office of Equity and Inclusion. She offers a variety of courses, including, Critical Queer Studies, Latinidad: An Introduction to Latina/o Studies, Queer of Color Critique, and Cultural Theory and Analysis.