Faculty Spotlight – Diana Aldrete

Bridging Scholarship, Art, and Justice from Mexico to Milwaukee

During my 2025–26 sabbatical, I have focused on completing my manuscript, Between Land and Death: Women Writing for Justice in Mexico, with generous support from the American Association of University Women through the 2025–26 American Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. The grant provided essential time and resources to enhance the research and writing of the manuscript. In September 2025, I published the article “Affective Aesthetics: Reimagining Memorials in Mexico” in ASAP Review, which directly informs one of the book’s chapters. Two invited campus visits during the Fall 2025, at the University of Vermont and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, facilitated ongoing dialogue that enhanced the manuscript’s points. In November, I workshopped on a draft chapter with the Mexican Studies Research Collective and presented another chapter-in-progress at the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) conference, participating in interdisciplinary discussions with colleagues from Trinity. This April (2026), I will present at the Kentucky Foreign Language (KFL) conference, where I will analyze a literary work thematically similar to, yet distinct from, my book project.

Alongside my scholarly writing, my sabbatical has allowed me to continue developing my artistic practice. In October 2025, I participated in the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) conference, where I engaged with fellow artists from New England and participated in conversations bridging artistic practice and Gloria Anzaldúa’s theories. I am also preparing to attend the Latin American Studies Association congress in Paris in May 2026 to celebrate the publication of Ecologies of Resistance: Arts, Activism, and Transdisciplinary Futures in Latin America and the Latinx Worlds (University of Virginia Press). I contributed a chapter on ecocritical paintings from my first art project, Invisible Suffering, and was honored to be selected as the book’s cover artist, with one of the paintings discussed in my chapter featured on the cover. While on sabbatical, I am primarily based in Milwaukee, WI—my hometown—which has become the grounding site for my second art project, Ech.o Locations, currently focused on Lake Michigan’s ecosystems and its growing environmental vulnerability.

I am profoundly appreciative of this sabbatical, which has provided me a unique opportunity to think extensively on two interrelated projects—one scholarly and one artistic—each examining different manifestations of violence while proposing critical frameworks for thinking through systems of oppression. This period of time allowed me to reflect on how cultural production, be it through critical writing or visual art, might direct our focus towards neglected histories and continued calls for justice. Moving between these projects has deepened my awareness of how storytelling, aesthetics, and place-based practices may challenge prevailing narratives and create new possibilities for care, accountability, and resistance. I’m excited to incorporate this new information, research, and creative methodologies into my classes upon my return in the 2026–2027 school year.