Vicente Carrillo

Dr. Vicente Carrillo is an artist, scholar, and political education facilitator. He received his Ph.D. in Chicana/o & Central American Studies, with an emphasis in Gender Studies, from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Carrillo’s research traces the contestations that arise from gentrification and the queer racialized bodies at the core of these debates. He explores these inquires in Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, a low-income immigrant Latinx neighborhood that has made national headlines for anti-gentrification mobilizations. Drawing from four years of ethnographic field work, qualitative interviews, and community-engaged anti-gentrification collaborations, his work provides a critical textual analysis of contemporary cultural works – queer bars, queer performance art, mainstream television, and muralism – to capture the complex ways queerness is mobilized as a place-making strategy. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Dr. Carrillo works at the intersection of queer of color performance studies, gentrification studies, and Chicanx/Latinx Studies. Outside of academia, Vicente is a practicing painter.

Dr. Carrillo’s Research interests include Queer Space, Chicanx/Latinx Cultural Studies, Latinx Geographies, Affect, Performance Studies, Queer of Color Theory, Urban Justice and Gentrification. 

Vicente Carrillo’s research has been funded and supported by the Inter-University Program for Latino Research Mellon Fellowship, the UCLA Gold Shield Alumni Fellowship, the UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship Fellowship, and the Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship.

Dr. Carrillo will teach LAS 150 Intro to Latin American Studies in the Fall and Spring. He will also be teaching LAS 201 Queer Latine Embodiments.

Highlighted Publications

Carrillo, Vicente. "Pride Arrives to the Barrio: An Ethnographic Reflection of Boyle Height's Orgullo Fest," Latinx Talk, 2022.

Forthcoming Publication in Latino Studies, “The Riddle: Queer Brown Intimacies in the Gentrifying Barrio”