About

My research primarily concerns how gender is understood, enforced, resisted, and embodied in the United States. A previous line of research explored the ways by which self-care is a gendered practice and the impact of this on social movement networks. Related projects explore how testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) is sold to cisgender men online through the use of right-wing discourse, how people disseminate knowledge on do-it-yourself medicine (namely, DIY-HRT and self-managed abortions), and the processes through which racial, gendered, and national difference can be leveraged to build solidarity amongst working people.

My current research project explores how HRT has become a proxy for gendered anxieties in the United States. I use ethnography, in-depth interviews, and content analysis of mixed media as primary methodology for this project. I am ultimately interested in how gender, embodiment, and the political economy of science and medicine intersect and the inequality that might arise from this intersection.

I am also a feminist educator and writer. I have taught Introduction to Sociology and have taught and developed courses on Race, Gender, and Class in U.S. Society; Medical Sociology; Sociology of the Body; and Health Social Movements. I currently teach undergraduate students at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX.

I am a California-born daughter of Mexican immigrants. I was raised in Texas and attended Brandeis University in Waltham, MA for my undergraduate degrees in Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. I earned my PhD in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.

My hobbies include oil painting, astrological writing, lagree, thrifting, hanging out with my sweet kitty (Motopapi), and exploring media about female friendship.