Harrod Suarez

Biography

In my research and in the classroom, my work examines 20th- and 21st-century literature, film, and art to explore issues having to do with how we become American and the role that race, class, gender, and sexuality play in this process.

My work is decidedly transnational and diasporic, meaning that I find it necessary to look to texts overseas for insights on what America means. For instance, my recent research has analyzed representations of immigrant mothers from the Philippines to think about how their gendered, maternal duties manifest in places like Los Angeles and Chicago. 

My approach is quite invested in literary, cultural, and queer theory. I think it is important to appreciate the details of a text in order to access its real texture, which frays at the edges and whose seams come undone if you nestle in it long enough. Reading for those moments when things don’t quite add up—when there is either a surplus or deficit of emotion, or labor, or text—drives my critical energies and helps me explore our cultural, social, political, and ethical relations.