Dr. Lau Malaver | they / them / theirs
Education
Ph.D., University of Colorado Boulder - Critical Ethnic Studies, Graduate Certicate in Gender and Sexuality Studies, Area of Specialization in Performance Studies, 2023
M.A., University of Colorado Boulder - Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practice, 2018
B.A., University of Colorado Boulder - Spanish Language & Literature, Humanities, and Ethnic Studies, 2015
Research Interests
Critical race and cultural social theory, critical ethnic studies, queer and trans of color critiques, performance studies/theory, intersectional feminisms, and de/post/anti-colonial theory
Dr. Lau Malaver completed their PhD in the Department of Ethnic Studies with cross-disciplinary training in Performance Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies. Their research focuses on how trans of color and queers of color negotiate their/our identity and embodiment across time and space, and the performance practices of resistance, refusal, and joy that result from that negotiation. Malaver's doctoral project, Recovecos: Race, Time, and the Performance of Trans Embodiment, investigated 21st century trans and queer cultural productions in the Américas, and analyzed how minoritized trans and queer scholar-artists use visual, digital, and embodied art to negotiate their relationship with the historical present and trans futures alike at the site of their own embodied experience. They examined this relationship through the theoretical framework they term Recovecos (Spanish for nooks, hidden turns, twists). Recovecos examines the ways that trans and queers of color embody multiple realities within and beyond hegemonic structures across space and time. Malaver's research offers insightful critiques and theoretical interventions in the emerging and promising field of trans of color studies/critique as their work proposes a multi-dimensional analysis of power, an in-depth approach to the crucial junctures of colonialism, time, and racial formation, and a practical decolonial offering for and not against trans life. Lau is also a performer and fiction writer.
Featured Publications and Performances
Pulsing Xquis: The Chorus (2023, December). Live Performance in Collaboration with Shawn Trenell O'Neal. Creative Residency at B2 Center for Art, Media, and Performance, Boulder, CO.
Pulsing Equis (2021, October 29). Collaboration with Shawn Trenell O'Neal, Recorded Performance in Untitled Creative Fusions “The Spirit Survives” event by Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO.
Convener and Facilitator of Twists, Nooks, and Turns: Creating New Grammars of Collective Memory, Intimate Architectures: Displacement, Irruption, and Emergency in the Americas, Hemi Graduate Student Initiative (GSI), New York University Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. University of Chicago, Illinois (2021).
“ABSCONDED #EjectionDay2020. Directed, written, and performed by Dragonfly (Robin LaVerne Wilson). Produced by HemiTV. New York City, NY. November 3, 2020.” In Ecumenica: Performance and Religion (2021).
“‘I’m la porqueria’: Reading Affective Embodiments in Vida.” In ASAP/J: Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present Journal (2020).
“‘¿Eres cuir, or what?’ Latinx Disidentificatory Practices of Becoming.” (2020) In Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities edited by Arturo J. Aldama and Frederick L. Aldama. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Audio Intersectionality & Recovecos Performance (2020, January). Collaboration with Shawn Trenell O'Neal, Live performance at Imagined Borders, Epistemic Freedoms: The Challenge of Social Imaginaries in Media, Art, Religion and Decoloniality. Center for Media, Religion, and Culture, Boulder, CO.
“Vida – Tanya Saracho, 2018—, Queer LatinX Cultural Production, Television seasons 1 and 2.” (Fall 2019) In Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures 4, no. 1. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
"Las arepas de Nidia," The Acentos Review, November issues (2018).
Recognition and Awards
Lau Malaver Receives Creative Residency at CU Boulder's B2 Center for Media, Arts & Performance
Lau Malaver receives Graduate Student Teaching Excellence Award