Rate My Professor Guillermo de Los Reyes

Dr. Guillermo de los Reyes serves as Department Chair and Associate Professor of Latin American Cultures and Literatures in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004, with a dissertation titled “Sodomy and Society: Sexuality, Gender, and Race and Class in Colonial Mexico.” His additional degrees include an M.A. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania (1999), an M.A. in American Studies from Universidad de las Américas-Puebla (1997, Summa Cum Laude), and a B.A. in International Relations from the same institution (1994, Magna Cum Laude). De los Reyes specializes in colonial Mesoamerica; gender, sexuality, and queer theory; Latin American cultural studies; secret and fraternal societies such as Freemasonry; and policy studies. He also focuses on colonial Latin American literatures and cultures, Mexican culture from pre-Hispanic to present, popular culture and folklore in the Americas, and cultural studies encompassing identity, nationalism, and cross-cultural communication.

Appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Houston in 2003 in what is now the Department of Hispanic Studies, he advanced to Associate Professor in 2009 and assumed the role of Department Chair. Additional appointments include Director of Undergraduate Studies, Associate Director of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies since 2009, Director of the GLBT Studies Minor, Faculty-in-Residence since 2011, and Associate Director of the Center for the Americas. His accolades encompass the Provost’s Core Teaching Excellence Award (2009), Bicentennial Commemorative Medal from the Mexican Senate (2009), and grants such as Digitizing LGBTQ+ Houston Past (2021, $10,000) and Mapping Slavery in Colonial Mexico (2020, $10,000). Key publications include authored books Herencias Secretas: Masonería, política y sociedad en México (2009) and Female Emancipation and Masonic Membership: An Essential Collection (2023); forthcoming Freemasonry in Mexico: The Secret Heritage (2024); edited volumes like Getting the Third Degree: Fraternalism, Freemasonry and History (2016, co-edited with Paul Rich); and articles such as “The Folklorization of Queer Theory: Public Spaces, Pride, and Gay Neoliberalism” (2021, co-authored with Cory Thorne) and “New perspectives on Latin American Freemasonry: three case studies” (2022). As Editor-in-Chief of Sexuality, Gender & Policy, and editorial board member for Íkala: revista de lenguaje y cultura and Politics & Policy, his contributions advance scholarship on Freemasonry, colonial gender and sexuality, and LGBTQ+ studies.