Manuel R. Cuellar is Assistant Professor of Spanish, Latin American, and Latinx literatures and cultures in the Department of Romance, German, and Slavic Languages and Literatures (RGSLL). He focuses on Mexican literary and cultural studies with an emphasis on race, gender, and sexuality. His research primarily engages questions of performance, especially as they concern dance, indigeneity, and negritud in Mexico, combining ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, and studies of contemporary and classical Nahuatl, Mexico’s most widely spoken and written Indigenous language. For over 20 years, Dr. Cuellar has been a practitioner of Mexican folklórico dance, as an instructor and performer, and he is currently part of D.C.’s Corazón Folklórico Dance Company. Dr. Cuellar’s strong background in Mexican traditional dance has led him to explore dance’s role in Mexican national identity, indigeneity, and queerness in Mexico and the United States. His forthcoming manuscript, Choreographing Mexico: Festive Performances and Dancing Histories of a Nation (UT Press), reveals how written, photographic, cinematographic, and choreographic renderings of a festive Mexico highlight the role that dance has played in processes of citizen formation and national belonging, from the late Porfirian regime to the immediate post-revolutionary era (1910-1940).
Dr. Cuellar is an Affiliated Faculty of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, the Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute, and the Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service.