University of Southern California
USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences  

graduate students

Vincent Cervantes


Contact Information

E-mail: vcervant@usc.edu


Biographical Sketch


With an extensive background in religious studies and theology, Vincent Cervantes is interested in exploring the intersectionality and intertextuality between race, sexuality, literature, and religion. Drawing on postcolonial and queer theoretical frameworks, Vincent engages how representations of queer embodiment in modern Spanish and Latin American literary and cultural arts inform and extend religious and theological discourses. 

 

Vincent is currently working on two book-length projects. The first critically examines the relationship between the "ex-gay" movement alongside deliverance and spiritual warfare Chrisitanity. The second is an edited volume that explores ways of reconceptualizing sex and sexuality as as site of queer resistance and space.


Education

  • B.A., Religious Studies, University of California, Riverside, 2010
  • M.T.S., Theology, Harvard Divinity School, 2012



Research


Summary Statement of Research Interests


  • Within Latin American and theological discourses, my work seeks to explore the social, existential, and embodied representations of queer subjects in Spanish and Latin American literary, visual, and performance arts; that is, bodies that resist the normative trajectories of socio-politically accepted sexualities. Accordingly, I am interested in questions of identity formation, cultural production, discursive representations of sexuality, and how these representations may function as religious and spiritual practice. Attending to intersections, my work proposes to reflect critically on sexualized bodies within Hispanic and Latino/a literary and cultural arts as a site of ethical discourse with particular attention to the ways in which moral philosophy, intersectional analysis, queer theory, and borderland theory, each in conversation with critical spatial theories, to extend and productively complicate the disciplines of Spanish and Latin American studies. To do such work, I explore Spanish and Latino/a literary, visual, and cultural arts as an archive of religious and queer themes; examine religious and political influences on gender and sexuality in Spain and Latin America; and finally draw on my background in liberation and queer theologies as a reflective framework in conversation with language, literature, and cultural studies.

Research Specialties


  • Modern Latin American literature and visual arts, Mexican literature and culture, Brazilian literature and culture, early modern and modern Spanish literature and culture, religious studies, border studies, liberation theology, gender and sexuality studies, queer theology and theory, postcolonial theory, aesthetics and politics

Conference Presentations

  • "Las jotas desgraciadas: Descolonizar encarnación y gracia." Paper to be presented at "Pressing On: Legacy of Marcella Althaus-Reid," ISEDET, Buenos Aires, Argentina., 7/2013
  • "Body Matters and Political Forces in Peri Rossi's La nave de los locos and Zapata's El vampiro de la colonia Roma." Paper to be presented at the XXXI International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association. Washington, DC., 5/2013
  • "El joto, el marica y el subalterno: Críticas radicales de representación y traducción de lo queer," Paper to be presented at the 15th Annual Lusophone and Hispanic Graduate Student Conference, University of California, Santa Barbara., 5/2013
  • "Jotería Publics: Promiscuous Bodies of Lived Religious Spaces." Paper presented at the American Academy of Religion Western Regional Meeting, Arizona State University., 3/2013
  • “Our Bodies, Our Spirits: Latinidad in Process of a Theological Mestizaje.” Paper presented at Queering Paradigms IV, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and Universidade Federale do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil., 7/2012
  • “Mestizo/a Spirituality: Negotiating Queer, Religious, and Chicano/a Identities,” Invited to present at the 6th Queer People of Color Conference, University of California, Riverside., 4/2011

Other Presentations


  • "Bible Boot Camp: What the Bible Says and Doesn't Say About Homosexuality", Invited to present lecture., Office of Religious Life and LGBT Resource Center, University of Southern California, Fall 2012   
  • "Borders Trouble: Decolonizing Unity in Difference and Power", Invited to present keynote lecture., East Coast Chicano Student Forum, University of Pennsylvania, Fall 2011   

Publications


  • Book
    Cervantes, V. D. Deliverance: Queer Demons, Exorcisms, and the Christian War on Sexuality.
     
    Book Chapter
    Cervantes, V. D. (2013). "Still Flaming." Queer in Aztlán: Chicano Male Recollections of Consciousness and Coming Out. San Diego: Cognella Press.
    Cervantes, V. D. (2013). "Digital De-Gayification: Ex-Gay Ministries and Online Youth Cultures," LGBT Youth and Media Cultures.
     
    Journal Article
    Cervantes, V. D. (2013). Evolving Theologies: Rethinking Progressive Theology Along the Lines of Jotería Studies.
    Cervantes, V. D. (2012). Hustling the Divine: Sex, Flesh, and Incarnation through Zapata's "Vampiro".
     

Guest Lectures in Courses


  • Chican@/Mexican Cultures: "Jotos in the Margin: Mexican Male and Gay Identities" Invited lecture., Fall 2012   

Service to the University


Other Service to the University


  • Senator, Graduate Student Government, 2012-2013   

Service to the Profession


Professional Memberships


  • Latin American Studies Association, 2012-  
  • Modern Language Association, 2012-  
  • American Academy of Religion, 2010-