Aitor Bouso-Gavín (he/him/él) joined EMR as a lecturer of Latinx Studies in Fall 2024, where he is also the faculty director for the Latinx Studies Working Group (LSWG). He completed his Ph.D. in Hispanic Literatures and Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in June 2024. Aitor is an interdisciplinary scholar with a primary focus on Latinx literature, culture, and visual arts. He is the recipient of the 2023-24 Mellon Sawyer dissertation writing fellowship in Race and Visual Culture in the Americas. His published work has also received awards such as the 2023 Victoria Urbano award by the International Association of Gender and Sexuality Studies (AGSS).
Aside from Latinx literature and visual arts, Aitor’s research and teaching interests are Black studies, medical humanities, decolonial trauma theory, and feminist and queer of color critique. His primary research draws on works by prominent Latinx authors and visual artists to examine the creative expression of internalized harm and trauma as a catalyst for personal, political, and social healing and relationality.
Informed by humanistic inquiry, anti-racist pedagogies, and prior experience at institutions such as the College of the Holy Cross and UMass Amherst, his courses foreground the interdisciplinary, transnational, and diachronic approach that shapes both his research and teaching. With a strong record of undergraduate instruction and recognition as a finalist for the UMass Amherst Distinguished Teaching Award, he has taught a wide range of courses, from “Spanish for Heritage Speakers” (UMass Amherst) to “Queer Interventions in Latinx Studies” (Harvard University, Fall 2024), “Afro Latinx Studies” (Harvard University, Spring 2025), and “LatinX Decolonial Healing” (Harvard University, Spring 2025).
Aitor is currently working on his book manuscript, Manifestations of the Wound: Decolonial Healing and Resistance in Latinx Literature and Visual Arts, a transdisciplinary study that introduces the conceptual and theoretical paradigm of the wound. Through close-readings as well as discourse and visual analysis of diverse sources, he directs attention to wounding vis-à-vis healing as a methodological approach, and, most importantly, as a disciplinary undertaking that draws attention to Latinx literature and visual arts’ role at the forefront of formulating alternative forms of healing beyond Western biomedical and secular practices. Aitor’s work has been featured in Chiricú: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures (Spring 2023), Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies (Fall 2021), Latin American Literature Today (Spring 2021), and The Massachusetts Review (Summer 2022)
US Afro-Latinx Studies Initiative:
In Spring 2025, Professor Bouso-Gavín launched the U.S. Afro-Latinx Studies Initiative. A program that seeks to foreground the histories, cultural production, and political endeavors of Afro-Latinx communities in the United States and across the Americas. Through a series of public events, artist talks, and scholarly conversations, the initiative aims to build interdisciplinary dialogue and foster greater visibility for Afro-Latinx voices and narratives within and beyond the academy. The following events represent part of its inaugural programming:
Fall 2025 Courses:
EMR 1010: Latinx Literature and Visual Arts | Lecture Course (Bouso Gavín) T, Th 12-1:15 PM
EMR 177: Cuir/Queer Latinidades: Film, Theater, and Performance in the Americas | Seminar (Bouso Gavín) M 3-5:45 PM
