Jotería Studies: A Radical Reader

Call for Abstracts

We enthusiastically invite scholars, artists, activists, and community practitioners to submit proposals for an upcoming book entitled Jotería Studies: A Radical Reader. We are particularly interested in submissions that creatively challenge disciplinary norms and center anti-disciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and embodied modes of inquiry in ways that aim to explore the historical and contemporary material realities of queer, trans, and non-binary Chicanx/e Latinx/e and people of color across entangled geographies. This includes scholarship and cultural production that does not fit neatly into academic categories but instead insists on new epistemologies, ways of knowing, emerging from movement spaces, kitchen tables, bedrooms, sacred sites, and dance floors.

Drawing from Queer Women of Color Feminism, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, and Queer and Trans Studies, this book seeks to center Jotería as a site of knowledge, inquiry and worldmaking where embodied theory, praxis and collectivity converge as ways to cultivate space for critical reflection and analysis, political and spiritual reclamation, insurgent and decolonial strategizing and planning, and community-oriented joy, healing and resistance. 

This project emerges from the urgent need to document and theorize Jotería as a critical and strategic negotiation between identitarian, disidentiarian, and embodied knowledges—moving us to embrace radical politics, futures, and solidarities within and against ongoing colonial, capitalist, and neoliberal fascism. We are especially interested in proposals that address varied scales and flows of knowledge-making, writing, and citation practices. 

Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):

  • Disability Justice, mutual aid, and care work

  • Queer and trans migration(s); Jotería and space; Jotería and geography 

  • Sex, pleasure, and desire; Sex positivity; Sex work; Putería Studies 

  • Jotería activism, organizing, and social movements

  • Jotería art, artivism, cultural production, and cultural work

  • Joteria and kink, BDSM, leather, furries, and cosplay

  • Joteria and Muxerista Studies; Chicanx/e Latinx/e Feminisms; Women of Color Feminism

  • Jotería in the field of Education and Critical University Studies; Pedagogies and situated knowledge that critically center Chicanx/e Latinx/e vernaculars of queer, trans and non-binary communities 

  • Jotería and fatness; Fat Studies; Jotería and the body

  • Jotería and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies; Jotería and Indigenous Studies

  • Jotería and Diaspora Studies (Latin America and Caribbean; Central America; South America; North America)

  • Jotería and healing; Restorative/transformative justice, spirituality, curanderismo, brujería; intergenerational healing; Intergenerational knowledge & femtorship

  • Jotería and Afro-Latinidad; Jotería and Latinidad; Latinidad and critiques of antiblackness, settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, racial capitalism, and neoliberalism 

  • Critical Solidarities and Resistance: Jotería and Palestine, Sudan and Congo

  • Queer and feminist ecologies and environmentalisms

  • Trans liberation and epistemologies 

  • Decolonial, anticolonial, and abolitionist futures 

  • Interrogation, reclamation, and exploration of historically derogatory terms in Latin America and the Caribbean (Maricón, Pato, Joto/a/x, Puñal/Puñeta, Marica, Travesti/Travestido, Marimacha)

  • Jotería soundscapes, performance, music, and visual sovereignty

  • Femme Aesthetics; Femme Studies; Jotería and Cute Studies

Submission Guidelines and Timeline:

We welcome individual, collaborative and experimental submissions that widen the scope of queer, trans and non-binary Chicanx/e Latinx/e knowledges including academic essays, personal and critical reflections, testimonios, visual arts, poetry, manifestos, as well as other creative and artistic formats. 

Abstracts of 300-500 words are due August 31, 2025. Please include abstract title, bio (150-200 words), and title/affiliation/positionality.  Abstracts and inquiries should be sent to joteriastudies@gmail.com.

Abstracts will be evaluated and invitations for full submissions sent by mid-late October 2026.

About the Editors

José Manuel Santillana Blanco is a scholar, community organizer, and storyteller. As a son of Mexican immigrant parents, Dr. Santillana Blanco was politicized within the rural migrant farmworker landscapes of central California. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies at UC Davis. Drawing on the work of Black, Latin American/Latinx, and Indigenous decolonial thinkers, his work explores the ways Black, immigrant, and Indigenous women-led community struggles across the United States have been foundational to our understanding of racialized social life, ecological violence, and resistance across entangled geographies. His work has been published in Aztlán: A Journal for Chicano Studies, University of Washington Press, University of Nebraska Press, and Routledge.

Dr. José Manuel Santillana Blanco

Anita Tijerina Revilla is a Muxerista and Jotería activist-scholar, Professor, and Chair of the Department of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. Her scholarship centers on student movements and social justice education, with a focus on Chicana/Latina, immigrant, feminist, and queer rights activism. Dr. Revilla’s areas of expertise include Jotería Studies (Queer Latinx Studies), Chicana/Latina and Black Feminisms, and Critical Race Theory. Dr. Revilla is the first in her family to attend college. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, a master’s degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a doctorate from UCLA’s Graduate School of Education. She co-founded the Association for Joteria Arts, Activism, and Scholarship. Beyond her academic work, she is a visual artist who celebrates her community through paintings embodying her passion for creativity, healing, and activism.

Dr. Anita Tijerina Revilla

Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr. is a jotx from North Hollywood, California. He earned his Ph.D. in Chicana and Chicano Studies from University of California, Santa Barbara and an MA and BA in Spanish from California State University, Northridge. An Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Fullerton, his work has been published in Latino Studies, TSQ, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Aztlán, Sounding Out!, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Performance Matters, Label Me Latina/o, and more. He is co-editor of Transmovimientos: Latinx Queer Migrations, Bodies, and Spaces (University of Nebraska Press, 2021) and the curator of the 2023-2024 exhibition “Finding Sequins in the Rubble: Archives of Jotería Memories in Los Angeles” at the Museum of Social Justice in downtown LA. Dr. Alvarez’s advocacy includes his work as an expert witness for asylum cases for gay and trans immigrants from Mexico.

Dr. Eddy Alvarez