Isabel Felix Gonzales is an Assistant Professor, General Faculty in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
Isabel’s research examines the ways that race, gender, and sexuality are deeply interlinked through projects of racial and sexual mythmaking, the limitations of and appeals made by mainstream gay and trans politics, and how digital platforms can, under certain circumstances, function as spaces of refuge and flight for those subjects made multiply marginalized. The book project specifically looks at the queer- and trans-of-color communities on Tumblr who theorized queer and trans life, survival, resistance, and memory during the “marriage equality era” of the late 2000s and early 2010s, a period of time that led to some gay political issues taking center stage in American politics.
In addition to this research, Isabel is currently working on a piece theorizing nonbinary as both identity and politic through the process of "growing up gay on the internet,” a term coined by the late Filipina American transfeminine artist, Mark Aguhar. Other projects in the works include an essay about finding kinship in queer-of-color ghosts, and co-authored projects about the Filipinx diaspora, the politics of the hyper-referential digital cultures defining certain queer and trans online spaces, and a concordance project about Cedric Robinson’s body of works.
Isabel received a PhD in political science from the University of California, Irvine and uses both they/them and she/her pronouns.
108 Levering Hall
PO Box 400172