Kristie Soares is an Associate Professor of Women & Gender Studies and Director of Queer and Trans Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. They are also a podcaster. Their work explores gender and sexuality in Latinx media, with a specialization in the music of the Caribbean diaspora.
Professor Soares’ book, Playful Protest: The Political Work of Joy in Latinx Media (University of Illinois Press, 2023), argues that joy is a politicized form of pleasure that goes beyond gratification to challenge norms of gender, sexuality, race, and class. Soares focuses on the diasporic media of Puerto Rico and Cuba to examine how music, public activist demonstrations, social media, sitcoms, and other areas of culture resist the dominant stories told about Latinx joy. As Soares shows, Latinx creators compose versions of joy central to social and political struggle and at odds with colonialist and imperialist narratives that equate joy with political docility and a lack of intelligence. Soares builds their analysis around chapters that delve into gozando in salsa music, precise joy among the New Young Lords Party, choteo in the comedy ¿Qué Pasa U.S.A.?, azúcar in the life and death of Celia Cruz, dale as Pitbull’s signature affect, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s use of silliness to take seriously political violence.
Professor Soares is also currently working on a book project about the role of Latinx DJs, musicians, and performers in the development of disco and dance music in 1970s New York, entitled Macho Man: Performances of Latinidad in the Disco Era. Professor Soares’ research on the topic appears in season two of the Signal-award-winning podcast Soundscapes NYC, which they co-hosted and co-produced.
Soares’ work has been published in Signs, Feminist Studies, Meridians, Frontiers, American Studies, Journal of Festive Studies, Letras Femeninas, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Remezcla, LatinxSpaces, Latino Rebels, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.
Professor Soares’ teaching draws heavily on queer and performance methodologies. They encourage students to “try out” intellectual concepts using their bodies, through decolonial pedagogies such as Theatre of the Oppressed. They also facilitate performance poetry workshops for schools and community organizations.