Adrianna M. Santos (she/her/ella) earned a B.A. in English from the University of Texas at Austin and M.A. and Ph.D. in Chicana/o Studies with a doctoral emphasis in Feminist Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Santos is an associate professor of English at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, faculty advisor for the Mexican American Student Association, and coordinator of the Creative Arts and Performance Studies interdisciplinary minor. Dr. Santos has has built her career on publications that center Chicana/x cultural production, and her work is deeply rooted in and accountable to Chicanx communities. She has published in the journals of Aztlán, Chicana/Latina Studies, and Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, with chapters in El Mundo Zurdo (Aunt Lute 2015), Teaching Mexicana and Chicana Writers of the Twentieth Century (MLA 2020), Nerds Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx/Latinx Young Adult Literature (Mississippi 2020), and Shakespeare and Latinidad (Edinburgh 2021). With Norma E. Cantú and Rita Urquijo-Ruiz, she is co-editor of Interplanetary Nepantla:El Mundo Zurdo 8: Selected Works from the Meeting of the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa, 2019 (2022). She also brings experience in theater and performance, which has led to several collaborations with Katherine Gillen, including an essay in Shakespeare Bulletin called “Borderlands Shakespeare: The Decolonial Visions of James Lujan’s Kino and Teresa and Seres Jaime Magaña’s The Tragic Corrido of Romeo and Lupe.” She is co-editor of The Bard in the Borderlands: An Anthology of Shakespeare Appropriations en La Frontera (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Press 2023) with Drs. Katherine Gillen (A&M-SA) and Kathryn Vomero Santos (Trinity University). Her forthcoming monograph Trauma and Healing in the Literary Borderlands: Beyond Survival (Palgrave 2023) addresses often-eclipsed legacies of colonial violence and examines how Chicana survival narratives make trauma visible within contexts of imperialism, indigeneity, and immigration, and recognizable to communities that continue to grapple with the wounds of such trauma.

Teaching Statement

As a native of San Antonio and first-generation PhD, I have unique insight into the needs and potential of our students. My pedagogy serves precisely to fulfill my commitment to communities of color and marginalized populations by centering these experiences in the classroom and responding to the specific context of our campus while maintaining the intellectual rigor of my training at a Research I university. I strive to contribute to the academic survival of students from historically under-served communities. My most important goals as an educator are to help shape independent thinkers and cultural creators that give back their communities. I aim to instill a strong sense of civic responsibility and leadership skills in students by engaging with the specific social issues in and around San Antonio and connecting them with broader global concerns.

In total, I have taught 24 distinct undergraduate courses, and 8 graduate courses, including the required Introduction to Graduate Studies in English. In addition to classes in the core, like First Year Composition, I have taught Introduction to English Studies, Senior Seminar, and a variety of courses for majors, minors, and non-majors across myriad themes and timelines. I piloted several courses: Major Authors, Mythology, Children’s Literature, Chicana Writers, Introduction to Drama, and Latinx Literature. I developed topics for existing courses related to my expertise like Tejana/o Writers, Women of Color Writers, Performance Studies, Latinx Drama, Coming of Age, and Border Narratives.

As the coordinator of the interdisciplinary minor in Creative Arts and Performance Studies, I am committed to innovative learning opportunities like Latinx Art Appreciation, co-taught with Professor Justin Korver which is supported by the Mays center for its experiential learning model. We bring in world-renowned artists to work directly with the students and focus on hand-on, culturally relevant curriculum that reflects the lives of the students and their communities and the power of the arts to make a real difference in peoples lives. Ultimately, the classroom, whether in person or virtual, gives me an opportunity to influence future generations to become independent thinkers and active participants in their communities. I look forward to continuing to grow as a teacher with students at the center of my pedagogy.