Cole Rizki
Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies
New Cabell Hall 457
Office Hours: Cole Rizki will be on pre-tenure sabbatical supported by an ACLS Fellowship from June 2024-January 2026.
Research Summary
Cole Rizki is assistant professor of Latin American Studies in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese and affiliate faculty with the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and the Department of American Studies at the University of Virginia. In 2024-2025, Rizki will be on leave with the support of an ACLS Fellowship. Rizki is a Latin Americanist and transgender studies scholar whose research examines the entanglements of transgender cultural production and activisms with histories of state violence and terror throughout the Américas. As a scholar of contemporary Latin American gender and sexuality studies, visual culture, memory studies, history, and performance studies, his work makes central interventions across these disciplines. Primarily, he analyzes the work of contemporary politics and aesthetics by examining how political demands take shape and become legible through visual, embodied, and archival representations and practices. Rizki’s monograph in process titled Travesti Tide: Trans Politics Beyond Liberalism offers a new historical and cultural interpretation of trans politics as a response to illiberal state violence and its forms. In doing so, the monograph provincializes US-centric histories of state violence, the liberal democratic state form, and identity politics that continue to underwrite the field of transgender studies. At the same time, Travesti Tide revises the study of fascism, authoritarianism, and populism by highlighting how sex and gender are central to these forms of governance and power.
Rizki’s editorial work in trans studies is also widely recognized. He is invited guest editor of a special issue of NACLA: Report on the Americas on queer and trans activisms and resistance practices across the hemisphere (in preparation, expected March 2025). He is also co-editor of "Trans Studies en las Américas," a special issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly on Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Trans Studies (May 2019). Since 2020, Rizki serves as TSQ’s Translation Section Editor. He is an active member of multiple national and international professional associations, and he currently serves as an executive committee member of the Modern Language Association’s 20th and 21st Century Latin American Forum Executive Committee.
Rizki’s scholarly work has received multiple awards and recognitions. In 2024, his article “Gore Aesthetics: Chilean Necroliberalism and Travesti Resistance” (JLACS) received the “Sylvia Molloy Prize” for Best Article in the Humanities from the Latin American Studies Association (Sexualities Section). His article “Familiar Grammars of Loss and Belonging: Curating Trans Kinship in Post-Dictatorship Argentina” (JVC) was also short-listed for the International Association for Visual Culture and the Journal of Visual Culture Early Career Researcher Essay Prize and received honorable mention for Best Article from the Visual Cultures Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association. His work in Latin American trans studies, trans visual culture, and trans history has similarly been recognized as essential reading in trans studies and included as part of two trans studies syllabi published by Art Journal and Radical History Review’s digital venue “Abusable Past.” In 2024, Rizki received the “All-University Teaching Award” at the University of Virginia in recognition of his outstanding undergraduate and graduate-level teaching and mentorship. His writing appears or is forthcoming in TSQ, Radical History Review, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Balam, and the Journal of Visual Culture among others with book reviews in GLQ and Women & Performance.
Affiliate Faculty, Department of Women, Gender & Sexuality
Affiliate Faculty, Department of American Studies
Links
Education
Ph.D., Duke University, 2020
M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2013
B.A., Smith College, 2008
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Articles
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Winner of the “Sylvia Molloy Prize” (2024) for Best Article in the Humanities awarded by the Latin American Studies Association Sexualities Section.
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Finalist for the International Association for Visual Culture and the Journal of Visual Culture Early Career Researcher Essay Prize (2020)
Essays & Roundtables
“Estéticas de sobrevida. Arte de reparación / Aesthetics of Survival, Art of Repair” exhibition catalogue essay in ¿Cómo retratar a una sobreviviente? / How to Photograph a Survivor? Germán Menna (ed.) (forthcoming Summer 2024).
“Visualizing (trans)masculinities” Balam, no. 9, special issue “Nuevas masculinidades” (August 2023): 31-32, 250, 257. *Introduction to special issue of Balam, contemporary Latin American photography magazine in Spanish/English/Portuguese.
Edited Volumes
Invited guest editor of NACLA: Report on the Americas special issue on queer and trans resistance to violence. Volume in preparation, details and call forthcoming. (Expected publication date March 2025).
Editorial Positions
Translation Section Editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, (2020-present)
Work that appears under Rizki’s editorship:
- Cole Rizki, “Trans-, Translation, Transnational,” section introduction, vol 8, no. 4 (2021): 532-536.
- Cynthia Citlallin Delgado Huitrón, “Transtocar, Three Fragments” in vol. 9, no. 1 (2022): 119-125.
- Francisco Fernández and Andrés Mendieta, “Toward a Trans* Masculine Genealogy in South America” in vol. 9, no. 3 (2022): 524-534.
- Liz Rose, “Trans* Poetics in Translation: Desire and Capacity in the Work of Susy Shock” in vol. 10, no. 1 (2023): 59-70.
- Marlene Wayar, “In My Mind There is a Cemetery / Hay un cementerio en mi cabeza” translated by Tania Balderas in vol. 11, no. 1 (2024): 135-140.
- Eugenia Azar and Pilar Cabrera, “To Exist and Resist: A Photographic Essay / Existir y resistir: un ensayo fotográfico,” translated by Tania Balderas in vol. 11, no. 1 (2024): 141-148..
Book Reviews
Selected Grants & Awards
University of Virginia
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ACLS Fellow (2024-2025) for monograph Travesti Tide: Trans Politics Beyond Liberalism
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Faculty Summer Resarch Stipend, Deans Office of Arts & Sciences, Summer 2024
Karsh Institute of Democracy Book Fellowship, Democracy Initiative, 2022-2023
Faculty Success Program, National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, Office of the Provost and Division for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Summer 2021
Duke University
Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Duke University, 2019-2020
Versatile Humanists Summer Internship Program, Duke University, Equality North Carolina, Summer 2019
Kenan Institute for Ethics Graduate Fellow, Duke University, 2018-2019
- Dora Anne Little Service Award, Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, Duke University, Summer 2018
- Robert K. Steel Summer Research Award, Graduate School, Duke University, 2017
Service Learning Faculty Fellow, Service-Learning Program, Duke University, 2016-2017
Foreign Language Area Studies Fellow, US Department of Education, 2015-2016
Latin American and Caribbean Studies Fellow, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center, Duke University, 2013-2014
Fulbright Teaching Fellow, US Department of Education, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010-2011
Courses
Undergraduate
- Transgender Studies in the Americas
- Queer Theory and Cultural Production in the Americas
- Survey of Latin American Literature II
Graduate
- Transgender Studies in the Americas
- Queer/Cuir Studies in the Americas
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