Deborah Paredez holds a Ph.D. from the Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama Program at Northwestern University. She teaches courses about race and performance in the Department of Theatre, the Center for Mexican American Studies, and the Center for African & African American Studies. Her recent scholarship has focused on U.S. Latina/o performance and popular culture. Her articles, "Remembering Selena, Re-membering Latinidad," (Theatre Journal, 2002) and "Becoming Selena, Becoming Latina" (Women and Migration in the US-Mexico Borderlands, Duke University Press, 2007) comprise part of her book, Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory (Duke University Press 2009), that explores the afterlife of the Tejana performer, Selena Quintanilla Perez. Her recent article, "All About My (Absent) Mother: Latina Aspirations in Real Women Have Curves and Ugly Betty," will appear in the anthology, Beyond El Barrio: Everyday Life in Latina/o America, under contract with New York University Press. Her next project, for which she received a 2008-09 AAUW Postdoctoral Fellowship, will focus on arts activism among communities of color in the Bronx.
Deborah will serve as Associate Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies for the 2009-2010 year and will also continue her work as Director of Arts and Community Engagement (ACE) in the Vice President's Office for Diversity and Community Engagement.
In addition to her work as a theatre scholar and performer, Deborah is also a poet. She is the author of This Side of Skin (Wings Press, 2002) and the recipient of the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Writing Award founded by Sandra Cisneros. Her poems have also appeared in Daughters of the Fifth Sun: A Collection of U.S. Latina Fiction and Poetry (Putnam, 1995), This Promiscuous Light (Wings Press, 1996), Floricanto Sí! A Collection of Latina Poetry (Penguin, 1998), and The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2007). She is currently at work on her second poetry volume, After the Light. Beyond the university, Deborah has taught writing workshops with young people of color in a range of venues.
