GENDER & SEXUALITY STUDIES PROGRAM

S.B. [Esbi] West (they/them [English]; elle/ella, -a, -e [Spanish]) is Associate Professor of Instruction in Gender & Sexuality Studies and is Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese. Their forthcoming book, On Autonomy and Abolition in Yucatán’s “Caste” War is a rereading of Yucatán’s nineteenth-century textual register that critiques the existence of the so-called Caste War conflict. This assertion is contextualized by contemporary Maaya T'aan [Yucatec Maya] narratives, including poems, essays, community museums, and podcasts that present a parallel and intersecting orientation to the uprising. Dr. West’s work has been published in South Atlantic Quarterly and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. Their other areas of interest include trans theory, abolitionism, and immigration narratives in Spanish from the US Midwest. Dr. West actively supports Chicago’s Spanish-language literary scene and often collaborates with El BeiSMan as a speaker at their book fairs. They have also collaborated with the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in downtown Chicago with art exhibits focused on life and politics in the Yucatán peninsula.

Dr. West’s classes are designed to be student-centered spaces of intellectual exchange and collaboration that attends to commonly marginalized texts in meaningful ways. Their courses are organized around decolonial, liberatory frameworks that question the cisheteronormative, colonial/modern underpinnings of gender, class and race relations. For a full list of courses taught, talks delivered, and publications, please visit their website: www.esbiwest.com.

Courses Taught

• Reading Gender Otherwise: Indigenous Movements and Literature in “Latin America”
• Gender in Colonial Spanish America
• Trans, Trasvesti, Muxhe—Narratives of Transness in “Latin America”
• Indigenous Rebellion through Literature
• Indigenous Testimonios in Translation