Rate My Professor Cathryn Merla-Watson

Cathryn Merla-Watson is an Associate Professor in Mexican American Studies in the Department of Literatures and Cultural Studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She specializes in Literature, with research focusing on Latin@ speculative aesthetics, Latinofuturism, queer Latinx aesthetics of apocalypse, Chicana/o cultural production, spectral materialisms, and spectral geographies. Merla-Watson earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota in July 2011. Her dissertation, "Spectral materialisms: colonial complexes and the insurgent acts of Chicana/o cultural production," was advised by Dr. Louis G. Mendoza. She is affiliated with the Mexican American Studies Program and Gender and Women's Studies at UTRGV, where she serves as faculty and has advised numerous graduate theses in areas intersecting literature, cultural studies, and feminist perspectives.

Merla-Watson's scholarly contributions include key publications such as "Hauntology of the Oppressed: The MeXicana Gothic and Spectral Geographies in Sandra Cisneros's 'Woman Hollering Creek'" in Monsters and Saints: LatIndigenous and Spectral Storytelling (2024); the chapter "Virginia Grise, blu: Queer Latinx Aesthetics of the Apocalypse" in Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction (MIT Press, 2022); "Latinofuturism" in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature (2019); "Haciendo Caras: The Alter-Native Illuminations of Laura Varela's Enlight-Tent" in Latina Outsiders: Remaking Latina Identity (2019); "Revolutionary Love: Bridging Differential Terrains of Empire" in The Un/Making of Latina/o Citizenship (2014); and "The Altermundos of Latin@futurism" in Alluvium: 21st-Century Writing, 21st-Century Approaches (2017). She has also published book reviews in Signs (2014) and co-authored work on radical activism. In addition to her writing, Merla-Watson co-curated the Latinafuturist art exhibit "Mars Need More Women" at Centro Cultural Aztlán in San Antonio, Texas, from March 24 to June 10, 2022. Her work engages with insurgent acts in cultural production, hauntology, and speculative poetics within Latinx and Chicana/o contexts.