Licia Fiol-Matta is professor of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University. Her research interests include hemispheric Latin American and Latinx literary and cultural studies, music, popular culture, feminist and queer studies, and psychoanalysis.
She is the author of A Queer Mother for the Nation: The State and Gabriela Mistral (Minnesota) and the The Great Woman Singer: Gender and Voice in Puerto Rican Music (Duke), which won the 2018 Frank Bonilla Award for Best Book in Puerto Rican Studies. Fiol-Matta is co-editor of the series New Directions in Latino American Cultures (Palgrave) and The Puerto Rico Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke). She has served on the Board of Directors of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, City University of New York; the Editorial Board of Social Text; the Advisory Boards of Nomadías (Chile) and Revista Hispánica Moderna (New York); and, currently, the Editorial Board of Revista de Estudios Hispánicos (St. Louis).
She is the recipient of grants from the Ford Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She holds a PhD from Yale University in Comparative Literature.
Licia Fiol-Matta se crió en San Juan, Puerto Rico, y es Catedrática en New York University. Graduada de Princeton y de Yale en Literatura Comparada, enseñó previamente en Barnard College y City University of New York (CUNY). Es autora de A Queer Mother for the Nation: The State and Gabriela Mistral (University of Minnesota Press) y The Great Woman Singer: Gender and Voice in Puerto Rican Music (Duke University Press). Próximamente saldrán en traducción: Una madre queer para la nación: El Estado y Gabriela Mistral, Editorial Palinodia, y La gran cantante: Género y voz en la música puertorriqueña, Editorial Callejón. Fiol-Matta se desempeñó como co-editora de la serie New Directions in Latino American Cultures de Palgrave Macmillan de 2001 a 2021. Es co-editora de Las Américas Quarterly, número especial de American Quarterly, y de The Puerto Rico Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press), en preparación. Escribe sobre género, sexualidades y crítica cultural latinoamericana hemisférica y diaspórica; y sobre música y cultura popular. Actualmente trabaja en dos manuscritos: el primero es una historia cultural de Latinoamérica contada mediante sus cantantes excelsas (y no tanto), y el segundo sobre feminismo latinoamericano y pensamiento. Ha sido becada de la Ford Foundation, la American Association of University Women, y la National Endowment for the Humanities. En 2016 recibió el Sylvia Molloy Award de la Sección de Sexualidades de LASA (Latin American Studies Association). Por The Great Woman Singer, Fiol-Matta recibió el Modern Languages Association US Latina and Latino and Chicano and Chicana Literary and Cultural Studies Prize, 2020; el Frank Bonilla Book Award de la Puerto Rican Studies Association, 2018; y una Honorable Mention, Woody Guthrie Award de la International Association for Popular Music Studies-US, 2018. La revista Current Musicology le dedicó un dossier a The Great Women Singer en 2018.
