Assistant Professor of Spanish
Ph.D., University of Virginia, 2022

Office: CMLL 247
Mathilda.Shepard@ttu.edu
http://www.mathildashepard.com 

Mathilda Shepard's research is situated at the intersection of Latin American visual culture, Indigenous studies, gender and sexuality studies and the environmental humanities. She is currently working on two book manuscripts: the first, Life Politics: Vital Enactments in Colombia, examines multiple genealogies and aesthetic expressions of "políticas de la vida" in Colombian performance, installation art and activist media; the second, Can You See Me Now? Shattering Ethno-Pornographic Vision, studies the Latin American post-pornography movement through critical dialogues with Indigenous performers and visual artists. 

Her articles and interviews have appeared (or are forthcoming) in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Journal of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, Revista de EstudiosColombianos, and Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades. 

Dr. Shepard received her Ph.D. in 2022 from the University of Virginia, where her doctoral research was supported by a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Her scholarship is deeply interwoven with her creative work as a visual artist and writer on projects such as Corrido Vibrante/Vibrant Currents (with Jorge Hernández Camacho and Criseida Santos-Guevara), a series of audiovisual, poetic and photographic interventions on water and extractivism in the Llano Estacado.

Research areas:

• 20th and 21st- century Latin America cultrual studies
• Visual culture
• Indigenous studies
• Gender and sexuality studies
• Environmental hunmanities
• Colombia, Mexico, and the Southern Cone

Recent Publications

•  “Detonando miradas: una conversación con Amber Bemak y Nadia Granados” (Interview). Forthcoming in Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades.
• “‘Mother Earth Liberating Herself': Indigenous Mobilizations, Planetary Relations and Transcorporeal Solidarities in Cauca, Colombia” (under review).
• “Un witral de hebras heridas: tejiendo miradas solidarias en Piñen de Daniela Catrileo” (under review).
• “Suturing or Puncturing the Social Fabric? Afro-Caribbean Textile Art and the Limits of Repair,”Journal of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (forthcoming).
• "Una opción sutil de protestar: Literary magazines and subterranean resistance in Putumayo, Colombia."Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 30, no. 3, 2021.

Teaching

Examples of courses taught by Dr. Shepard include the graduate seminar “Cultural Studies Beyond the Human: Perspectives from the Plantation Américas” (SPAN 5355) and the undergraduate course “Picturing Pachakuti: Visual Media and Indigenous Futures in Latin America” (SPAN 3600). She has also taught “Advanced Spanish Grammar” (SPAN 4305) and “Social Change in the Hispanic World through Film, Literature, Art and Music” (SPAN 2300). During academic years 2023-2025, Dr. Shepard is contributing to the development of Texas Tech's Indigenous and Native American Studies (INAS) program as an Expanding the Circle: Indigenous and Native American Studies faculty fellow.