Vidal-Ortiz
Biographic Data
| ID | 11997 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vidal-Ortiz |
| FAMILY NAME | Vidal-Ortiz |
| SIGNATURE | VIDAL-ORTIZ |
| AFFILIATIONS | American University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4864-2665 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 311 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The Whiteness of it all
Todas las Flores
This essay places in context Todas las flores, a film by the Puerto Rican filmmaker Carmen Oquendo-Villar. As an illustration of the Santa Fe neighborhood in Bogotá, Colombia, a bar/hostel called Tabaco y Ron, as well as trans elders and leaders of the community, this very localized film is connected to what the author calls a Latin American travesti sensibility. One way this is accomplished is by the use of furia travesti, a phrase that continue…
Bodies that repel
Lohana Berkins
This article articulates Lohana Berkins' Latin American travesti theory . Centred on the body and her feminist-influenced lived experience, Berkins' theory is deeply concerned with intersectionality as a corporeal experience. Drawing from oral presentations, media coverage, published interviews, and Berkins' writing, we elaborate on a thread of aspects that distinguish this Latin American travesti theorizing. From Berkins' contributions, we illus…
Death at the Border
This article seeks to extend the limits that death appears to posit, by tracing the lives, journeys, and deaths of two Central American transgender migrant women (Roxsana Hernández Rodríguez and Johana Medina León) who entered legal ports of entry, requested asylum (in 2018 and 2019), and died under or immediately after being in U.S. custody. Extending Queer Necropolitics' use, I rely on the Sociology of the Trace to unearth an archive from dispa…
Enlace
W. E. B. Du Bois as Interactionist
Recent scholarship explores the relevance and canonical status of W. E. B. Du Bois in sociological theory; yet less is said about his contributions to symbolic interactionism. This paper interrogates the emerging meaning of W. E. B. Du Bois for sociology, and the nature of his canonical incorporation. We explore the less “official” dimensions of Du Boisian theory, and in particular two of his contributions to symbolic interactionism: double consc…
From rage to love
This article derives from a five-year collaborative engagement in which we intermittently visited Mocha Celis, a community-based high school programme in Buenos Aires. We seek to illustrate how, by centring travesti/trans experiences, some of Mocha Celis’s practices align with Quinlivan’s notion of an ‘epidemic of love’. By doing this, we hope to extend Quinlivan’s focus on sexualities education by showing the impact centring travesti people as p…
Negotiating racialized organizational spaces and intimacies
Based on 18 months of ethnographic research in a Northeast corridor strip club we call Playpen, we engage sex negotiations, erotic service exchanges, and the circulation of desire within an informal, weekly “Latina Night” event. We treat Playpen as a gendered and racialized organization in which patrons, dancers, and employees manage established, yet unspoken rules. Labor interactions and dynamics between dancers and clients are racialized when g…
A Sea of Whiteness
This article connects sociological analyses of race to sexuality to rethink the teaching of the sociology of sexualities. Through the use of the image of the sea, I locate whiteness as a root for the challenges in current pedagogical approaches at my institution, knowing that it is merely an example of multiple others facing similar problems at the structural level. Using autoethnography as a method to illustrate personal experiences in the class…
Introdução
Editores: Diego Falconí Trávez(Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona/Universidad San Francisco de Quito),Lourdes Martínez-Echazábal (Universidade de Califórnia Santa Cruz/Universidade Federal deSanta Catarina), Joseph M. Pierce (Stony Brook University), Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (AmericanUniversity) e Maria Amelia Viteri (Universidad San Francisco de Quito
Travar el saber
This article focuses on what we call, following Argentinean thinker and activist Lohana Berkins, travar el saber. Travar el saber is travesti theorising; rooted in Berkins's conceptualisation of travesti as a political identity, it works to understand, question, and transform the tenets and practices that uphold and reproduce exclusionary dynamics. Our analysis draws on efforts taking place at the Bachillerato Popular Travesti y Trans Mocha Celis…
Editors’ Preface
Editors’ Conclusion
Latina/o Sexualities
Latina/os are currently the largest minority population in the United States. They are also one of the fastest growing. Yet, we have very limited research and understanding of their sexualities. Instead, stereotypical images flourish even though scholars have challenged the validity and narrowness of these images and the lack of attention to the larger social context. Gathering the latest empirical work in the social and behavioral sciences, this…
A Queer Sociology
In this article, we argue for “a queer sociology” that centers race and processes of racialization, while naming and decentering Whiteness. “A queer sociology” is a field that foregrounds relations of power, particularly: race, class, empire, gender and gender identity, and sexuality, and that does not use queer in a reductionist way (or merely in reference to LGBT identity‐based projects). We question the uses of queer theory in sociology and sh…
LGBT Studies Without LGBT Studies
Our article tackles gender and sexual diversity scholarship in Colombia and Perú, two countries without institutionalized LGBT studies programs. By analyzing the impact of literary works in Perú and an annual conference in Colombia's capital, we show how LGBT-related scholarship (and activism) has been advanced in these Andean countries with tactful maneuvering, as they offset contemporary violence-and a strong religious influence. Our comparison…
The Sexuality of Migration
This book explores the complex interplay between sexuality and migration, focusing on the experiences of Mexican immigrant men in the United States. Challenging conventional narratives that often depict immigrants as solely economic actors, the contributors examine how migration reshapes sexual identities, practices, and communities. The book delves into topics such as the negotiation of masculinity in new cultural contexts, the impact of migrati…
Memories of a penitent heart
Borders are Both Real and Imagined
In this short piece, Vidal-Ortiz reconnects with Cantú's contribution to a better understanding of tourism across the US–México border, extending it to address colonial-global and local-national dynamics
Sociology of sexualities, Latinas and Latinos
Latinx thoughts
Travar el saber
Travar el saber recoge las experiencias de personas travestis y trans en espacios educativos a través de narrativas en primera persona. El libro se centra en el trabajo de tres organizaciones pioneras en estos esfuerzos: el Bachillerato Popular Trans Mocha Celis, OTRANS Argentina y la Universidad Nacional de Avellaneda. Travar el saber es una frase asociada a Lohana Berkins, una de las principales referentas de movimientos sociales y militancias …
Sexual Cultures in Latin America
A definition of “sexual cultures in Latin America” necessarily rests on a series of assumptions that need to be unpacked so as to offer productive ways of thinking about what the topic means and how to empirically engage with them in related research. First, the notion of “Latin America” is based on the disparate unification of many countries (from the rest of the Americas) through a perceived cultural homogeneity that ignores language variabilit…
Caribglobal
Caribglobal:Colonial Desire, Transgression, Exclusion, and Belonging in the Caribbean Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (bio) Rosamond S. King's Island Bodies: Transgressive Sexualities in the Caribbean Imagination. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014 Angelique V. Nixon's Resisting Paradise: Tourism, Diaspora, and Sexuality in Caribbean Culture. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015 "The Caribbean" has been exploited through various mechan…
The Sexuality of Migration
This book explores the complex interplay between sexuality and migration, focusing on the experiences of Mexican immigrant men in the United States. Challenging conventional narratives that often depict immigrants as solely economic actors, the contributors examine how migration reshapes sexual identities, practices, and communities. The book delves into topics such as the negotiation of masculinity in new cultural contexts, the impact of migrati…
On Being a White Person of Color
Latinx thoughts
The Figure of the Transwoman of Color Through the Lens of 'Doing Gender
often visit my birth family in Manati, a mid-size town in Puerto Rico.For over 20 years, I have driven on a main road (before the expresswaywas built) that connected the West and the North parts of the Island. At theoutskirts of town, there is often a voluptuous woman—with low hips, darkhair, tight jeans, and more often than not smoking a cigarette. She standsby the side of the road in what seems to be a small pathway to a house.She cruises the p…
A Queer Sociology
In this article, we argue for “a queer sociology” that centers race and processes of racialization, while naming and decentering Whiteness. “A queer sociology” is a field that foregrounds relations of power, particularly: race, class, empire, gender and gender identity, and sexuality, and that does not use queer in a reductionist way (or merely in reference to LGBT identity‐based projects). We question the uses of queer theory in sociology and sh…
Displacing the Dominant 'Down Low' Discourse
This article troubles the "down low" (DL) discourse by focusing on an Internet forum—Craigslist.org—where people on the "down low" post. The advertisements, gathered from seven cities in two U.S. regions, reinforce some of the "down low" discussion in the previous literature, as they show a pattern of seeking "masculine" men. These ads also depart from general perceptions such as the DL being a term used predominantly by black men. The authors di…
Transgender and Transsexual Studies
This article provides a general sense of transgender studies in sociology. It does so by looking at the definitions and relationship between the terms transgender and transsexual, the history of transsexual studies, sociology's place in this development, and the active production (by trans people) of transsexual and transgender studies. This review primarily focuses on US sociological writing, including ethnomethodology, labeling, feminist, and s…
Whiteness
This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Written by emerging academics, community-based writers, and senior scholars, each essay in this special issue, "Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century Transgender Studies," revolves around a particular keyword or concept. Some contributions focus on a concept central to transgender studies; other…
Sexuality discussions in santería
Travar el saber
This article focuses on what we call, following Argentinean thinker and activist Lohana Berkins, travar el saber. Travar el saber is travesti theorising; rooted in Berkins's conceptualisation of travesti as a political identity, it works to understand, question, and transform the tenets and practices that uphold and reproduce exclusionary dynamics. Our analysis draws on efforts taking place at the Bachillerato Popular Travesti y Trans Mocha Celis…
Maricón,” “Pájaro,” and “Loca
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States are, to varying degrees, practitioners of the Afro-Cuban religion popularly known as Santería. Cuban and Puerto Rican forms of referencing LGBT populations are illustrated in this article, which is drawing from interviews and participant observation conducted in the United States, with close to 30 practitioners, many of whom were Cuban, Cuban America…
Sex Work Among Men Who Have Sex with Men and Transgender Women in Bogotá
Teaching and Learning Guide for
The field of ‘trans’ studies, which incorporates transsexual, transgender, and cross‐dressing among its experiences and theorizing, has undergone tremendous changes within the century or so in which it has been developing. Initially, the scope of transsexual studies spans for almost a century, across social institutions and within a rigid model of proving a person's ‘true transsexuality’. On the other hand, the reach and depth of transgender stud…
Borders are Both Real and Imagined
In this short piece, Vidal-Ortiz reconnects with Cantú's contribution to a better understanding of tourism across the US–México border, extending it to address colonial-global and local-national dynamics
Puerto Ricans and the Politics of Speaking Spanish
Negotiating racialized organizational spaces and intimacies
Based on 18 months of ethnographic research in a Northeast corridor strip club we call Playpen, we engage sex negotiations, erotic service exchanges, and the circulation of desire within an informal, weekly “Latina Night” event. We treat Playpen as a gendered and racialized organization in which patrons, dancers, and employees manage established, yet unspoken rules. Labor interactions and dynamics between dancers and clients are racialized when g…
Introdução
Editores: Diego Falconí Trávez(Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona/Universidad San Francisco de Quito),Lourdes Martínez-Echazábal (Universidade de Califórnia Santa Cruz/Universidade Federal deSanta Catarina), Joseph M. Pierce (Stony Brook University), Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (AmericanUniversity) e Maria Amelia Viteri (Universidad San Francisco de Quito
LGBT Studies Without LGBT Studies
Our article tackles gender and sexual diversity scholarship in Colombia and Perú, two countries without institutionalized LGBT studies programs. By analyzing the impact of literary works in Perú and an annual conference in Colombia's capital, we show how LGBT-related scholarship (and activism) has been advanced in these Andean countries with tactful maneuvering, as they offset contemporary violence-and a strong religious influence. Our comparison…
Puerto Ricans and the Politics of Speaking Spanish
The Famous 41
On Being a White Person of Color
Sexuality discussions in santería
Introduction to Retheorizing Homophobias
The first inklings of this special issue surfaced in conversations we had on our seemingly divergent projects ‐ projects that were decidedly not focused on the question of homophobia. Salvador was completing his study of gender and sexuality in Santeria. Karl was working on a social history of the psychiatric diagnosis Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood. While these projects seemed quite distinct, in our conversations we kept coming back to a …
The Puerto Rican Way is More Tolerant
Existing academic analyses of Santería portray it either as homophobic because of its hierarchical restrictions, or as the ultimate liberatory space for `sexual minorities'. Meanwhile, complicated uses of homophobia circulate in Santería in ways often overlooked because of these aforementioned portrayals. This article examines constructions of homophobia as rooted in Whiteness/gayness, and how communities of color reproduce homophobia narratives.…
Transgender and Transsexual Studies
This article provides a general sense of transgender studies in sociology. It does so by looking at the definitions and relationship between the terms transgender and transsexual, the history of transsexual studies, sociology's place in this development, and the active production (by trans people) of transsexual and transgender studies. This review primarily focuses on US sociological writing, including ethnomethodology, labeling, feminist, and s…
Teaching and Learning Guide for
The field of ‘trans’ studies, which incorporates transsexual, transgender, and cross‐dressing among its experiences and theorizing, has undergone tremendous changes within the century or so in which it has been developing. Initially, the scope of transsexual studies spans for almost a century, across social institutions and within a rigid model of proving a person's ‘true transsexuality’. On the other hand, the reach and depth of transgender stud…
The Figure of the Transwoman of Color Through the Lens of 'Doing Gender
often visit my birth family in Manati, a mid-size town in Puerto Rico.For over 20 years, I have driven on a main road (before the expresswaywas built) that connected the West and the North parts of the Island. At theoutskirts of town, there is often a voluptuous woman—with low hips, darkhair, tight jeans, and more often than not smoking a cigarette. She standsby the side of the road in what seems to be a small pathway to a house.She cruises the p…
Maricón,” “Pájaro,” and “Loca
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States are, to varying degrees, practitioners of the Afro-Cuban religion popularly known as Santería. Cuban and Puerto Rican forms of referencing LGBT populations are illustrated in this article, which is drawing from interviews and participant observation conducted in the United States, with close to 30 practitioners, many of whom were Cuban, Cuban America…
Gay Latino studies
Displacing the Dominant 'Down Low' Discourse
This article troubles the "down low" (DL) discourse by focusing on an Internet forum—Craigslist.org—where people on the "down low" post. The advertisements, gathered from seven cities in two U.S. regions, reinforce some of the "down low" discussion in the previous literature, as they show a pattern of seeking "masculine" men. These ads also depart from general perceptions such as the DL being a term used predominantly by black men. The authors di…
Sex Work Among Men Who Have Sex with Men and Transgender Women in Bogotá
Whiteness
This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Written by emerging academics, community-based writers, and senior scholars, each essay in this special issue, "Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century Transgender Studies," revolves around a particular keyword or concept. Some contributions focus on a concept central to transgender studies; other…
Queer Brown Voices
Sexual Cultures in Latin America
A definition of “sexual cultures in Latin America” necessarily rests on a series of assumptions that need to be unpacked so as to offer productive ways of thinking about what the topic means and how to empirically engage with them in related research. First, the notion of “Latin America” is based on the disparate unification of many countries (from the rest of the Americas) through a perceived cultural homogeneity that ignores language variabilit…
Caribglobal
Caribglobal:Colonial Desire, Transgression, Exclusion, and Belonging in the Caribbean Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (bio) Rosamond S. King's Island Bodies: Transgressive Sexualities in the Caribbean Imagination. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014 Angelique V. Nixon's Resisting Paradise: Tourism, Diaspora, and Sexuality in Caribbean Culture. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015 "The Caribbean" has been exploited through various mechan…
Sociology of sexualities, Latinas and Latinos
Latinx thoughts
Travar el saber
Travar el saber recoge las experiencias de personas travestis y trans en espacios educativos a través de narrativas en primera persona. El libro se centra en el trabajo de tres organizaciones pioneras en estos esfuerzos: el Bachillerato Popular Trans Mocha Celis, OTRANS Argentina y la Universidad Nacional de Avellaneda. Travar el saber es una frase asociada a Lohana Berkins, una de las principales referentas de movimientos sociales y militancias …
Memories of a penitent heart
Borders are Both Real and Imagined
In this short piece, Vidal-Ortiz reconnects with Cantú's contribution to a better understanding of tourism across the US–México border, extending it to address colonial-global and local-national dynamics
Editors’ Preface
Editors’ Conclusion
Latina/o Sexualities
Latina/os are currently the largest minority population in the United States. They are also one of the fastest growing. Yet, we have very limited research and understanding of their sexualities. Instead, stereotypical images flourish even though scholars have challenged the validity and narrowness of these images and the lack of attention to the larger social context. Gathering the latest empirical work in the social and behavioral sciences, this…
Sociology (31 works) · Gender Studies (25 works) · Political science (16 works) · Latin American and Latino Studies (15 works) · Gender Studies (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Human sexuality (12 works) · Anthropology (11 works) · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy (11 works) · Law (9 works)