Javier Fernández-Galeano

I am a Ramón y Cajal fellow at Universitat de València (Spain). My research and teaching interests include gender and sexuality in Latin America and Iberia, queer archives, psychiatry and forensic medicine, state violence, prison management, and transnational activist politics.

My book Queer Obscenity argues that in twentieth-century dictatorial Spain, state agents, in their compulsive attempts to censor, eradicate, and prevent the circulation of “obscene” images and publications (both amateur and professionally produced), paradoxically and painstakingly curated, restored, and preserved a vast archive of the obscene. My  book Maricas traces the erotic lives and legal battles of Argentine and Spanish maricas, shifting the focus to non-elite actors––rural populations, recruits and prisoners, fans of flamenco music, and defendants' mothers––and to queer transnationalism in spirituality, folk music, fashion and performance, and visual and material culture. 

I have a PhD in History from Brown University, where I graduated as a Mellon/ACLS fellow; a MA in Historical Studies from the New School for Social Research, where I was a Fulbright scholar; and two BAs in history and anthropology (both cum laude) from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. I have published in Radical History Review, the Journal of the History of Sexuality, the Latin American Research Review, and Encrucijadas, among others.

I love siestas, feeling warm in winter, and daydreaming.