Deanna Ledezma is a Lecturer in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at SAIC. She will graduate from the University of Illinois at Chicago this May with her Ph.D. in Art History, having successfully defended her dissertation “The Fecundity of Family Photography: Histories, Identities, Archival Relations” in February. Her dissertation examines how the uses and ways of relating to photographs redefine and reframe what is regarded as a family photograph and what “counts” as family. In addition to her research-based scholarship, she also writes creative non-fiction based on her own family’s photographic collections and their experiences as Mexican immigrants. Her essays have been published in Art Journal and Photography and Culture as well as by Walls Divide Press and Green Lantern Press. Forthcoming publications include “Dismantling Latinx Monoliths: Representations of Material Culture, Communities, and Kinship in 1980s Chicago” in The Routledge Handbook of American Material Culture Studies and an essay about the United Farm Workers Instagram in the Re:Working Labor book, edited by Ellen Rothenberg and Daniel Eisenberg.
Her fellowships and awards include the Santa Fe Art Institute Truth and Reconciliation Thematic Residency, the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR)/Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, the Abraham Lincoln Fellowship, and the Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois Fellowship. She has also served as the Graduate Academic Advisor for the Latin American and Latino Studies Program and the Research Assistant for the IUPLR/Mellon Program.
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