Carina Guzman

Biography

Pronouns she or they. Carina was born in Mexico City, to a family with roots in Puebla and Texas. As a scholar with a digital- and performance-based creative practice, they critically account for how Trans- Feminist and Queer (TFQ) communities collect, conserve, and re-circulate their historical media materials to activate archival and history-telling digital initiatives, across the Hemispheric Americas. Through concepts such as memoria (“memory”), as it is used in Latin America to refer to counter-hegemonic historical knowledge that emerges from silenced resistance movements, as well as mi desmadre, which is Mexican slang for “my mess,” Carina theorizes TFQ nightlife and cabaret as sites of knowledge-making and media praxes. At the center of their pedagogy and research is the question: “What does it mean to identify and decenter the mechanisms that uphold cisheteropatriarchal values and colonial modernity?” Carina is also a Co-Editor, along with Stephen Lawson, at the Cabaret Commons (cabaretcommons.org), which is a work-in-progress gathering place for TFQ artists, activists, audiences and researchers. Furthermore, they are the initiator of the Community of Machistán Digital Collection of Art, Media and Memoria (MachaMeMe), which is an intimately-scaled, community-specific archival project about lesbian nightlife in Mexico City in the 2000s.

Education

Undergraduate: History at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Master’s: Geography at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Doctorate: Information and Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto