Dr Vek Lewis

BA Hons (Monash), PhD (Monash)
Senior Lecturer
Chair of Department (Semester 1 2012)
Room 718 Brennan-MacCallum Building (A18)
Phone: +61 9351 4524
Email:

Part of my research focuses on representations of sexual minorities, marginalized groups and urban life in contemporary Latin American cultural production. I’m mainly a scholar located in Mexican Studies, although I have interests related to Cuba, the Caribbean, Chile and Latinos in the USA. My current work is related to cultural and moral spatialities, migration realities, politics and control, and the work of institutions in regulating peoples’ lives.

Although I started as a cultural studies scholar looking at literary and non-literary texts, I am more and more moving into social research and methods, to try and connect my political interests with a scholarship that might work for social change. In this respect, I am inspired by Participant Action Research and Institutional Ethnography in particular. My teaching interests lie in Latin American popular cultural forms, critical race, gender and sexual diversity studies.

Research Areas

• Contemporary Latin American literature
• 20th and 21st Century Latin American cinema
• Gender, Sexuality and the Law
• Mass media representations
• Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Studies
• Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
• Social movements and change
• Migration Studies
• Comparative Indigenous Knowledges and Critical Decolonial Theory

Current Projects

• 'Latin American Migration to Sydney: The Chilean Case'. Co-directed project (with Fernanda Peñaloza) currently underway that examines Chilean migrants’ perceptions of identity in Sydney.
• 'Nuevos ambientes, ¿historias compartidas?' Latino/a sexualities and identities in the context of migration to Sydney. A study on LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) migrants from Latin America who reside in Sydney, and how the migrational process is informed by, but also re-forms, sexuality and sexual identity.
• 'Understanding S/exile from Within: Internal Migrations, Municipal Space and Vulnerable Sexual Minorities in Mexico'. This project examines internal displacements of transgender people in Mexico forced to flee their cities due to violence. Although recent research sheds light on why such people to cross national borders, little is known about local conditions that provoke internal migrations. Such data is crucial in offering responses to stem the tide of violence. It combines a political economy analysis with an examination of local political cultures and elite masculinities, as well as mapping the labor-driven and social motives of displacement via an intersectional lens.

Selected Publications

Books

Crossing Sex and Gender in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan USA (2010)

This book offers a ground-breaking approach (informed by critical sociology) to the impact of representations of trans/gender variant peoples in Latin American cultural forms and discourse. Challenges North American hegemonic queer understandings and provides a culturally sensitive analysis.

Book Chapters

• 'Forging “Moral Geographies”: Law, Sexual Minorities and Internal Tensions in Northern Mexico Border Towns' in Trystan Cotten (ed). Trans/Gender Migrations: Bodies, Borders and the (Geo)Politics of Gender Crossing (Routledge, accepted October 2009)
• ‘When “Macho” Bodies Fail: Spectacles of Corporeality and the Homosocial/sexual in Mexican Cinema’ in Mysterious Skin: Male Bodies in Contemporary Cinema, ed. Santiago Fouz-Hernández, I.B. Tauris, 2009.

Journal Articles

• 'Volviendo visible lo invisible: hacia un marco conceptual de las migraciones internas trans en México'. Revista Cuicuilco October 2011.
• ‘Grotesque Spectacles: The Janus Face of the State and Gender Variant Bodies in the Work of Reinaldo Arenas’ in Chasqui: revista de literatura latinoamericana 8(1): May 2009, pp. 104-24.
• ‘Performing Translatinidad: “Miriam” the Mexican Transsexual Reality Show Star and the Tropicalization of Difference in Anglo-Australian Media’ in Intimate Visions: Sexuality, Representation and Visual Culture, Spec. Issue of Sexualities (U.K.) April, 2009.
• ‘Of Lady Killers and “Men Dressed as Women”: Soap Operas, Scapegoats and the Mexico City Police Department’ in PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 5.1, January 2008. see: http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ojs/index.php/portal/article/view/480
• ‘Sociological Work on Transgender in Latin America: Some Considerations’ in Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies (JILAS) 12.2, 2006, 71-90.
• ‘Walking in the “delinquent” city’ in Place, Memory, Identities: Australia, Spain and the New World. Antipodas XV Special Issue, 2003-4.
• ‘La noche delincuente: la representación del prostituto en El vampiro de la colonia Roma, Las púberes canéforas, y La Virgen de los Sicarios’ in JILAS: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 9:1, 2003. see pdf at www.ailasa.org/jilas

Translations

• ‘First (I) Dream’ (extract from poem by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz); ‘Dreamless City’ (poem by Federico García Lorca); ‘Your Skull’ (poem by Jaime Saenz) in Dreamhoard, ed. John Kinsella, Salt Books, (October 2008)
• ‘The City: Deconstructing the Barcelonan Imaginary’ by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. (translation) Más allá de la periferia: narrativas de identidad en Cataluña, Galicia y el País Vasco/Beyond the Periphery: Narratives of Identity in the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia. (Ed. Stewart King) Spec. Issue of Antipodas XVIII, 2007.

Areas of Teaching and Research Supervision

Teaching

• Latin American Popular Culture
• Latin American Film and Literature
• Critical Theory and Methodologies (Honours, 2010)
• Latino/a Studies (Masters)
• Sexual Diversity Politics and History

Research supervision

• Latin American literature and film
• Queer, gender and trans studies
• Post-revolutionary, modern and contemporary Mexico and Cuba
• Debates in Latin American cultural studies
• Comparative Colonialities and Decolonial Thought
• Sociology of Violence
• Political Cultures in Mexico
• Masculinities
• Migration Studies

Supervision - Current Candidates

PhD and MPhil candidates

• Intercultural Health at the Frontier of Expanding Nation-States: The Contested Amazonian Border Region of Ecuador and Peru. This project examines the hybridisation between indigenous and western medical practice in communities experiencing the expansion of modernity from the nation-state centres of Ecuador and Peru into the remote, jungle regions of these nationsʼ territories. (Candidate: Christian Tym; Assoc. Supervisor: Dr Luis Fernando Angosto Ferrández)
• Colombian Migrant Communities in Australia: Their Represented Identities in Print Media and in Encounters among their Members. This study investigates the representations made of Colombia by Australian print media and the way Colombians living in Australia construct their identity as immigrants at the same time they react and respond to those media representations. (Candidate: Liana Mercedes Torres Casierra; Assoc Supervisor: Dr Fernanda Peñaloza)
• Locas e internacionales: Subjectivity and Social Relatedness among the Sexually Diverse in Ciudad de México (Candidate: Kylie Tobler; joint with Anthropology, Dr Jadran Mimica)
• Mobilization as a means of constructing autonomy. This project examines the new norms of behaviour in the relationship that indigenous communities have with the State by providing a critical account of the fight that the Cocas, inhabitants of Mezcala (a community on the shores of Lake Chapala, Mexico), are undertaking in their confrontation with the Mexican State and urban-industrial society. (Candidate: Inés Durán Matute, Assoc. Supervisor: Dr Fernanda Peñaloza)
• The Meaning of Modernity. This is a comparative study of “Latin American” self-representation and the Franco-Belgian gaze on “Latin America” in a selection of “Latin American” and Franco-Belgian comics. (Candidate: Annick Pellegrin; joint with French, A/Prof Bronwyn Winter)
• Discursive Constructions of Bilateral Relations: Chile and Australia in the Context of the 2008 Free Trade Agreement. This thesis comparatively examines from a socio-historical and geopolitical context the path that Chile and Australia as settler societies have followed in signing a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 2008, the first that Australia signed with a Latin American country. Combining theoretical tools in the field of Critical Discourse Analysis, this research will firstly deconstruct the central features of Chilean and Australian dominant discourses between the return of democracy in Chile in 1990 and the year of the Chilean bicentenary in 2010. Secondly, this project will explore and compare the mutual visibility and invisibility between Australia and Chile in terms of imaginaries and the construction of notions of identity through a selection of articles in the written press. (Candidate: Irene Strodthoff; Associate Supervisor with Dr Fernanda Peñaloza, Principal Supervisor)
• Invisible in the City?: Humanitarian Outreach for the Urban Displaced in Bogotá. (Candidate: Steven Bunce; joint with Anthropology)
• Making a Life out of the Worship of Death: A psycho-dynamic examination of the phenomenology of the mestizo’s experience of La Santa Muerte in Mexico City. (Candidate: Wendy Risteska; joint with Anthropology)
• Sexuality and Homophobia in Collective Violence and Political Transitions. This project provides an analysis of how conflicts have a different impact among men and among women because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It will investigate the similarities and difference between gender and sexual violence against women and violence against homosexuals and transgender people in contexts of armed conflicts and peace processes. (Candidate: Fernando Serrano; Primary Supervisor: Prof. Raewyn Connell)

Honours (2008 - 2011)

• * Tintin and the Secret of Satire, 2008 (Annick Pellegrin; joint with French)
• * Virtual Powerlessness: Mexico’s Kidnapping Crisis, 2009 (Steven Bunce)
• * Ind'genas del Sur: Un estudio comparativo sobre las pol'ticas ind'genas en Australia y Chile, 2009 (Jeremy Dornan)
  * Mobilisation, Repression and Reaction: Social Movements in Authoritarian Political Contexts, 2010. (Katrina Hayes; joint with Arabic and Islamic Studies)
• * E a favela criou o jovem. Una perspectiva sobre la juventud marginada en la favelas de Rio de Janeiro, 2010 (Nicole Fidalgo)
• * "If you got that hot blood…" Hip Hop and Rethinking Borders in the Caribbean Hemisphere, 2010 (Tara Morrissey; joint with English)
• * The Political Economy Of Pension Reform In Contemporary Chile, 2010 (Tui Swinnen; joint with Political Economy)
• * Cactus, a Prickly Subject: the Cultural Significance of Nopal throughout Mexican History, 2011 (Alice Brennan).
• * El amor en los tiempos del cólera: The Translation, and the Translation of the Translation, 2011 (Amy Carruthers)
• * ¿El Hombre Mexicano o los hombres mexicanos?: La Diversidad de la Masculinidad en un Pa's de los Estereotipos, 2011 (Nathan Guenette)

Conference Papers and Invited Guest Lectures

• [Guest seminar] “Nuevos ambientes: ¿historias compartidas?, sexualidad, identidad sexual y cultural entre latinoamericanos en Sidney, Australia”, Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Universidad de Guadalajara, 13 October 2011
• [Guest seminar] "Geograf'as morales: pol'tica, salud y diversidad sexual en la frontera de México" Instituto de Geograf'a, UNAM, 20 October 2011.
• “Más allá de la identidad de género individual: la transfobia y los (des)órdenes del poder masculino municipal en México”, V Congreso de la Asociación Mexicana de Estudios de Género de los Hombres, Puebla, Mexico, 28-30 September 2011
• “Nuevos ambientes: ¿historias compartidas?: Sexualidad, identidad sexual y cultural entre latinoamericanos en Sydney, Australia”. Queer Studies Easter Symposium/Simposio de Estudios Queer de la Pascua, 13 de abril 2011
• [Keynote] ‘Replanteando la violencia como sistémica. Hacia una interpretación materialista de la transfobia en México’. Trans-identidades, Género y Cultura, Casa de la Amistad, Havana, Cuba, 9-11 June.
• ‘Thinking Transphobia Intersectionally: A Ground View from Latin American Locales’. Intersectionality: Challenging Theory, Reframing Politics, Transforming Movements, UCLA School of Law, March 11-13, 2010.
• ‘Dialogue, but on Whose Terms: Transforming Indigenous Knowledges or Transforming University Knowledge Practices?’. Indigenous Knowledges Symposium. Into the Academy: Indigenous protocols, ethics, philosophies and methodologies in higher education at the University of Sydney, 14-15 December 2009.
• ‘The Construction of the “Social Problem” of Travestis in Tecate, Baja California’. Center for the Study of Genders and Sexualities, California State University, L.A., U.S.A., February 26, 2009. [Guest lecture]
• ‘Do Political Identities Translate Cross-Culturally? The Case of “Transgender” in Latin America’. Transsexual and transgender bodies: Technological and socio-cultural distinctions between transgender and transsexual experience and meaning making. ISA International Sociological Congress Meetings, Barcelona, Sept. 5-8, 2008.
• Roundtable - The American-ness of Queer Studies. Panel participant with Dennis Altman and Annamarie Jagose, ANZASA (Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association) Conference, University of Sydney, July 4-7, 2008.
• ‘Representando/Raptivismo: el hip hop underground en América Latina. Popular Culture/Cultura popular. VIII International AILASA Conference, Monash, Melbourne, July 2-4, 2008.
• ‘Public Order, Sexual Morality and the Criminalization of Travestis in Mexico’. Department of Gender and Cultural Studies Seminar Series, USYD. May 16, 2008.
• ‘Media, Law and Sexual Minorities: The Case of Travestis in Mexico’. Transsomatechnics: Theories and Practices of Transgender Embodiment. Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, May 2, 2008.
• ‘Not the Subaltern but Political Activist and Institutional Ethnography in Latin America!’ Futures of Latin America, Institute of Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne, April 16, 2008. [Guest lecture]
• ‘Beyond Play, Ploy and Performativity: Travestis in Latin American Cinema and Culture’. Image + Nation: le festival international de cinéma lgbt de Montréal, Concordia University, Montreal, November 17, 2007. [Invited and trip paid for by the Canadian Arts Council]
• ‘Challenging Neoliberalism, the State and Traditional Paradigms: Social Theory as Praxis among Three Marginalised Groups’. LASA 2007: After the Washington Consensus: Collaborative Scholarship for a New América. XXVII International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Montreal, Canada, September 7, 2007.

Other Professional Contributions

• Secretary and Member of the Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia (AILASA)
• Book review editor for the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research ~ JILAR
• Member of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA)
• Member of Sydney University Research Community for Latin America (SURCLA)