Gisabel Leonardo

Biography

Gisabel Leonardo is joining the St. Mary’s faculty following a visiting position at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. She holds a PhD from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with concentrations in Latin American Literatures and Cultures and Latina/o Studies. Her teaching and scholarly interests center on the Hispanic Caribbean and its U.S. diaspora, focusing on expressions of identity formation through performance in contemporary literary, artistic, and musical cultures. Her work currently examines the complexities of the Dominican hair salon and how Dominican hair culture is reproduced and reimagined in music, literature, and art.