PRE-ORDER OPEN FOR MY BOOK: The Revolution Will Be Improvised: The Intimacy of Cultural Activism with University of Michigan Press. Click DOWNLOAD FLYER for a DISCOUNT:
The Revolution Will Be Improvised by Elizabeth Rodriguez Fielder
I’m a writer, creator, dancer, and Assistant Professor of English and Latina/x/o Studies at University of Iowa. I research and write about activism, performance, and creativity. My book manuscript “The Revolution Will Be Improvised: Intimacy and Performance of the Civil Rights Movement” is a multidisciplinary study of creative activism and performance by POC artists and revolutionaries in the 1960s and 70s. This book engages in the role of creativity in social movements and argues that the aesthetics of cultural production shaped civil rights politics. I also write art criticism and articles on migration, archives, and urban design. I teach courses on multiethnic U.S. and hemispheric literatures (especially African American and Latinx), queer theory, performance, and women of color feminism, but also on topics that spark joy, such as gardening and coffee.
I believe we best understand our world through embodied practice and engagement. Influenced by Cherríe Moraga’s theory in the flesh, I let my observations of the world be guided by my intuition and personal experience. As a scholar and writer, I embed my experiences as a queer, latinx, feminist into my critical perspectives and engage my thinking with movement and embodied knowing.
A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives- our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings–all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity.
Cherríe Moraga, This Bridge Called My Back
Elizabeth Rodriguez Fielder 