David Tenorio

At the interstice of Latinx Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Performance Studies, New Media, and Queer and Trans of Color Critique, Dr. David Tenorio (he/them) is a queer Latinx scholar, teacher, and activist examining hemispheric queer and trans cultures, particularly in Mexico, the Caribbean, and the U.S.

Dr. Tenorio’s first book, Queer Relajo: Feeling the Nightscapes of Mexicanidad (University of Michigan Press, 2025), examines how queer and trans cultural practices of relajo (playfulness), dancing, cruising, and longing shape the material infrastructures of queer and trans worldmaking. Drawing from the fields of performance and media studies, critical infrastructure studies, new feminist materialisms, and trans of color critique, the book argues that queer modes of sensing disorientate neocapitalist commodification and neoliberal extraction. “Queer Relajo” considers how affective networks transform queer and trans modes of perception, affection, and consumption in racialized “gay-friendly” spaces in urban Mexico and the U.S. In doing so, this book traces alternative modes of consumption and affective networks of joy and care amidst capitalist gentrification in the Americas. Dr. Tenorio is also working on two additional research projects, namely an edited volume in collaboration with queer AfroCuban writer Alberto Abreu on queer and trans genealogies in AfroCuban and Afrodiasporic studies, as well as a second book project on trans/queer music festivals in the Latinx Caribbean.

Dr. Tenorio has been involved in various digital humanities projects (www.sexualidadescampesinas.ucdavis.edu; www.queerutopias.org), and has served as member of the Editorial Board for the University of California-Davis’s Interdisciplinary Journal on Latin American Studies, Brújula (www.brujula.ucdavis.edu). He has been the recipient of various grants and awards, including the Bejel-Gibbs Graduate Award, the Humanities Program Fellowship, the Humanities Arts & Cultural Studies Dean’s Fellowship, the UC-CUBA Travel and Research Grant, the Mellon Public Scholar Fellowship, the Professor of the Future Program Fellowship, the UC-MEXUS Research Grant, and the University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection Conference Award, the 2020-2020 Faculty Fellowship in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, among others. He has served as an Editorial Team Member for the Caribbean Studies Association, as Co-Chair of the LASA Sexualities Section, and as member of the Executive Committee to the MLA Forum on Cuban and Cuban Diasporic Studies. Currently, he sits on the board of directors for Escritura Pública, a community-based, social justice-focused arts and humanities organization providing a safe space for women’s creative writing, wellbeing, and storytelling in Puerto Rico. 

Courses Taught 

• Feeling Otherwise: Affect Studies (SPAN 2224)

• Queer/Trans Feminist Formations (GSWS 1141)

• Queer Mexico (SPAN 1439)

• Performance in the Americas (SPAN 1414)