José Eduardo Valdivia Heredia
Research Interests
Womanism/Mujerismo, Jotería Studies, and Queer of Color Critique; Latin American Performance Art; Religion in the Americas and Black Atlantic Religions; Mexican Cultural History; Drag and Gender Performance
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Research & Bio
José Eduardo Valdivia Heredia (they/elle/ellx) is a Ph.D Student in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, where they are a recipient of the Chancellor’s Fellowship. They are a queer, first-generation Chicanx artist and scholar from Sonoma, California. José received a B.A. in Religion and Latin American/Latinx Studies from Swarthmore College (2023), where they co-founded Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal. Their undergraduate thesis explored notions of nationalism, “high” art, and popular entertainment in La Más Draga, a Mexican drag reality competition.
At UC Berkeley, José’s research looks at the intersection of aesthetics, religion, and self-mutilation in the Americas, centering on the practices of Black and Latinx women and queer femmes. They interrogate the racialized/sexed body through the framework of “beautiful suffering,” which asks, how do women and femme practitioners—across place/space, time, and tradition—create a sense of agency and belonging via the aesthetic production of (sacred) pain? At the intersection of performance, philosophy, psychology, spirituality, and theology, this project fleshes out questions of ethical suffering and radical intimacy as expressed by racialized women and queer femmes across the Americas.