PeopleFaculty

Kaplan 266
Tel: 310.825.4670 / Fax: 310.267.4339 / E-mail

Education 

• PhD, English UC Berkeley 2006
• MA, English U of Wisconsin, Madison 1999
• BA, English UC Berkeley 1996

Bio

Marissa López is Professor of English and Chicana/o Studies at UCLA, researching Chicanx literature from the 19^th century to the present with an emphasis on 19^th century Mexican California. She has written two books: Chicano Nations (NYU 2011) is about nationalism and Chicanx literature from the early-1800s to post-9/11; Racial Immanence (NYU 2019) explores uses of the body and affect in Chicanx cultural production.  She just completed a year-long residency at the Los Angeles Public Library as a Scholars & Society fellow with the ACLS where she worked to collaboratively develop a mobile app, “Picturing Mexican America,” that uses geodata to display images of Mexican California relevant to a user’s location.

Professor López is the immediate past Vice President of the Latina/o Studies Association, an academic organization that brings together scholars, students, activists and community leaders in Latinx Studies.  She is also a past Associate Director of UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center, past chair of UCLA’s Committee on Diversity and Equal Opportunity, and past chair of both the Modern Language Association’s Executive Committee on Chicana/o Literature and its Committee on the Literature of People of Color of the US and Canada.

Recent Publications

Racial Immanence: Chicanx Bodies Beyond Representation. New York: New York University Press, 2019.

“Versos y Besos: Mapping Manuela.” ASAP/J: the open-access platform of ASAP/Journal, 10/18/2020, http://asapjournal.com/versos-y-besos-mapping-manuela-marissa-lopez/

“The Xicano Future is Now.” ASAP/Journal 4.2 (2019), pp. 403-428

“The Difference latinidad Makes.” American Literary History 31:1, (2019), pp. 104–121.

“Why I Still Believe in Chicanx Studies” English Language Notes 56:2 (2018), pp. 104-106.

“Picturing Mexican America in the Age of Realism.” American Literary Realism 49:3 (2017), pp. 263-281.

“Feeling Mexican: Ruiz de Burton’s Sentimental Railroad Fiction.” The Latino Nineteenth Century.  Jesse Alemán and Rodrigo Lazo, eds. New York: New York University Press, 2016, pp. 168-190.

Interest Areas
• Chicana/o Literature & Culture
• American Literature & Culture
• Critical Theory
• Visual Culture / Media Studies / Digital Humanities
• Postcolonial Theory / Transnational Studies