Alexandra T. Vazquez

Alexandra T. Vazquez is Professor of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at Yale University. Her research and teaching interests focus on performance studies, music, Caribbean aesthetics and criticism, and U.S. Latina and Latin American Studies. She is the author of The Florida Room (Duke University Press, 2022), chosen by Pitchfork as one of the best books of 2022. Her previous book, Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban Music (Duke University Press 2013), won the American Studies Association’s Lora Romero Book Prize in 2014. Her work has been featured in such journals as small axe, American Quarterly, Social Text, women and performance, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies; and in the edited volumes Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, Keywords for Latina/o Studies, Reggaeton, The Tide Was Always High, and Pop When the World Falls Apart. You can also find her writing on the great Celia Cruz on NPR’s “Turning the Tables” series. Prior to coming to Yale, Vazquez was Chair and Professor of Performance Studies at New York University, an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Center for African American Studies at Princeton University (2008-2015), and a Postdoctoral Associate in the Program in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale University (2006-2008). Vazquez is currently working on Performance on Performance, a user-friendly introduction to the field of Performance Studies based on a sequence of lectures she gave in New Orleans, Newark, Mexico City, and Madrid. Vazquez is a proud graduate of the New World School of the Arts high school in Miami, Florida.