Carmen Valdivia

Professor Carmen Valdivia joined Lafayette College in July 2023, after serving as Visiting Assistant Professor at Macalester College. Born and raised in Cusco, Peru, she immigrated to the United States as part of the Peruvian diaspora after the Internal Armed Conflict between 1980-2000. She earned her Ph.D. in Spanish with an emphasis in Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis in 2021, where she also served as director of the Davis Feminist Film Festival (2019) and Education and Training Coordinator at the AB540 and Undocumented Student Center (2020). Her research integrates racial, Indigenous, and feminist critiques to examine contemporary Latin American cultural production with special attention to Indigenous women’s issues and representation in the Andean area. She has also participated in a collaborative digital project with leaders of ONAMIAP, the National Organization of Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Women of Peru. Her second project explores audiovisual cultural production by young Indigenous women in urban settings and their use of social media as a political tool and a space for cultural sovereignty.

Professor Valdivia teaches courses in Latin American film and literature, transdisciplinary seminars on Indigenous cultural production in the Americas, and Spanish for heritage speakers.