Aitor Bouso-Gavín (he/him/él) joined EMR as a lecturer of Latinx Studies in Fall 2024, where he is also the faculty coordinator for the Latinx Studies Working Group. 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, decolonial trauma theory, feminist and queer of color critique, and medical humanities. 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 “Queer Interventions in Latinx Studies” (Harvard University) to “Spanish for Heritage Speakers” and “Latin Literature and Visual Arts” (Harvard University). Currently, his teaching includes courses ranging from Afro-Latinx Studies to Latinx Decolonial Healing.
Aitor’s book project, Manifestations of the Wound: Decolonial Healing and Resistance in Latinx Literature and Visual Arts, is a transdisciplinary study that introduces the conceptual and theoretical paradigm of the wound. Through close-readings and 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 political undertaking that draws attention to Latinx literature and visual arts’ role at the forefront of formulating alternative forms of healing beyond Western scientific and secular practices. Aitor’s work has been featured in Chricú: Latina /o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures (Spring 2023), Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies (Fall 2021), Hopscotch Translation and The Massachusetts Review.
Spring 2025 Courses:
EMR 167: Critical Afro-LatinX Studies in the US | Lecture Course (Bouso Gavín) T, Th 12-1:15 PM
EMR 170: Decolonial Healing in LatinX Literature and Visual Arts | Seminar (Bouso Gavín) M 12-2:45 PM
