GRETEL VERA-ROSAS, PH.D.

Professor Vera-Rosas studied photography at El Camino Community College and has a B.A. in Literature with a focus on Modern Literary Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California. Broadly speaking, her work uses a feminist and decolonial framework to examine the political and cultural representations of mothers who exist outside the boundaries of legality in the Américas. In addition to this, her most recent research explores the limits and opportunities offered by visual cultural production to think critically about the social worlds destroyed and produced by the drug wars and security and immigration policies in the hemisphere. She is currently working on a book manuscript that centers film, silk-screening, performance, and photography to analyze the visual economies of deportation, migration, and the war on drugs in Mexico. At CSUDH, she is member of  the Undocumented Student Ally Coalition (USAC) and is an active mentor and advocate of student-moms on campus.

Publications

Peer-Reviewed:

• Vera-Rosas, Gretel H. “Regarding ‘The Mother of Anchor-Children’: Towards an Ethical Practice of the Flesh,” Special Issue The Decolonial Gesture in e-misférica 11.1 (Spring 2014). https://hemisphericinstitute.org/en/emisferica-11-1-decolonial-gesture.html
• Vera-Rosas, Gretel H. “Friendship, Sex Work and Transnational Motherhood: A Feminist Analysis of Beatriz Flores Silva’s En la Puta Vida (Tricky Life).” Feminist Formations. 30, no 2 (Summer 2018): 90-117. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/702856/pdf
  
  
• Vera-Rosas, Gretel H. “Coordinates: A Testimonio on Migration, Mothering and Teaching.” The Chicana M(other)work Anthology. University of Arizona Press (2019). https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/the-chicana-motherwork-anthology
  
  
• Vera-Rosas, Gretel H. “Immigrant Intimacies: Understanding Mediated Relationships Across Borders.” Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures (Fall 2020). https://muse.jhu.edu/article/777865
• Vera-Rosas, Gretel H. and Perla Guerrero. “Immigrant Identity is Twin Skin to Linguistic Identity: Tracing the Afterlife of Deportation in Mexico City ” Special Issue: Politics of Language, Multilingualism, and Translation in American Studies in American Quarterly (forthcoming)

Online Featured Essays:

• Vera-Rosas, Gretel H. and Perla Guerrero. “Retornar es Complicado: Immigrant Empowerment and Parenthood in the Afterlife of Deportation.” Global South Center (March 2021). https://globalsouthcenter.org/features/

Book Reviews:

• Vera-Rosas, Gretel H. “Review of Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglas, Sarmiento, Du Bois and Vasconcelos by Juliet Hooker,” Special Issue Expulsions in e-misférica (December 2018). https://hemisphericinstitute.org/en/emisferica-14-1-expulsion.html

Film Reviews:

• Vera-Rosas, Gretel H.  “Review of La loi de la banane by Mathilde Daimosel” in Chasqui: revista de literatura latinoamericana (November 2020).

Poetry:

• The Acentos Review, “Negro Azulado” & “This Gift These Cacti” (forthcoming  June 15, 2021).

Works in Progress:

• Vera-Rosas, Gretel H. Indexing the Other: Graciela Iturbide’s Maternal Bodies and Deaf Subjects of East L.A.’s White Fence.
• Vera-Rosas, Gretel H. Crossings, Transits, and Returns: An Exploration of Migrants and Deportees’ Artistic and Activist Interventions. 
• Vera-Rosas, Gretel H. “A Politics of Sustenance: Visualizing Solidarity and Central American Migrant Illegality.” 
• Vera-Rosas, Gretel H. “Changing the Narrative: Black and Latina Student-Moms in Higher Education.”

Courses Taught :

UNIV 101  Minors at the Border: Childhood, Migration and Visual Culture in the Americas

SOC 334   Women in Society

SOC 355   Modern Social Theories

SOC 384   Communities, Resistance, and Social Change

SOC 395   Motherhood, Race and the Law

SOC 595   Graduate Writing in Sociology