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. I center discourse analytic, ethnographic, and acoustic phonetic approaches in exploring how these queens vary in their production of /s/. I illuminate how its variation is embedded in moments of ideological tension between types of drag that valorize normative white femininity in contrast to locally-enregistered cross-modal styles. This brings further attention to the need to contextualize race/racialization in sociophonetic accounts of /s/ and its “gendered” effects.
Related Publications:
- [Forthcoming, 2024] Mendoza, D. That /s/ tiene tumbao: Chonga-fied Sibilants and the Disidentificatory Sociophonetics of Miami Latinx Drag. Abstract accepted for special issue, Gender and Language.
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.
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
*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