Laura Gutiérrez, an associate professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, joined the College of Fine Arts in August as the new associate dean for community engagement and public practice. In this role, Gutiérrez will focus on high-visibility and high-impact engagement initiatives with community partners to foster a culture of collaboration between the college and Austin’s immensely diverse local arts scene.
Gutiérrez was recruited to UT Austin originally to join the Performance as Public Practice faculty in the Department of Theatre and Dance in 2013 before she transitioned to the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies. Her areas of research include Latinx performance, visual culture, queer studies and feminism. She is the author of Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage, and she has published essays and book chapters on topics such as Latinx performance, border art, Mexican video art and Mexican political cabaret. Recently, her writing has appeared in Decentering the Nation and The Cambridge History of Latina/o Literature.
She is on the board of the Tepoztlán Institute for the Transnational History of the Americas, a weeklong seminar that takes place every summer in Tepoztlán, Morelos, Mexico, and she is on the board of the Project X Foundation in Los Angeles, which oversees the publication of X-Tra, the longest-running contemporary arts journal in the city. Gutiérrez is on the board of OUTsider Fest, an Austin-based transmedia nonprofit that celebrates the bold originality and creative nonconformity of the LGBTQ+ communities through its annual festival. She has been the education coordinator and curator of the Conference on the Couch and a performance curator.