Rosanna Simons

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Rose Simons

Rosanna Simons

Alumni

Cohort 2013-14

Email: rosannasimons@ucla.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Biography

Rosanna cultivates queer & decolonial research, pedagogy, and creative practice. She engages ideas of migration & choreographed movement, surveillance & documentation, queer temporalities & performance, and settler colonialism & decolonization. In her dissertation, Rosanna examines how systems of identification and official documentation function as technologies of US settler colonial violence and control. In the current context of rapidly expanding state surveillance, Rosanna asks, what are the stakes, risks, and political potentialities involved in migrant performances of “documenting the undocumented”? Through embodied experiences of video, sculpture, installation, and performance artwork, Rosanna develops theories of the settler colonial temporality of surveillance. She argues that each artwork illuminates the risks of visibility politics, envisioning and embodying forms of queer, anticipatory, relational recognitions.

Rosanna is co-founder of the bozalta collective and co-editor of the online journal bozalta: arts, activism, scholarship (www.bozalta.org). She has performed in Los Angeles, CA at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Hammer Museum, Highways Performance Space, Plaza de la Raza, Art Share LA, and Visitor Welcome Center; in Brooklyn, NY at Wild Embeddings Gallery; in Tulsa, OK at Living Arts of Tulsa; and in New Orleans, LA at Art Klub and Ashé Cultural Arts Center.

Education

  • New York University, New York, NY MA in Humanities and Social Thought, 2012

Research

  • Performance Studies
  • Gender Studies
  • Queer Indigenous Studies
  • Migration Studies
  • Latinx Studies

Selected Publications

  • Simons, Rosanna. Review of Undocumented Everyday: Migrant Lives and the Politics of Visibility, by Rebecca M. Schreiber, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. (forthcoming spring 2020)
  • Simons, Rosanna, Isabel Durón, Rafael Solórzano, Kaelyn Rodríguez, Alana de Hinojosa, Gaby Rodriguez-Gomez, Eds. “Tierra Sagrada.” bozalta: arts, activism, scholarship. Vol 3. www.bozalta.org. Spring 2018. “La playa espera por vos.” By Wingston González. Translated by Rosanna Simons. Directed by Alice Motard. Performance by Juan Maldonado and Wingston González. September 2017, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France.
  • Simons, Rosanna, Isabel Durón, Rafael Solórzano, Kaelyn Rodríguez, Alana de Hinojosa, Joseph Rios, Eds. “#bozalta4blacklives.” bozalta: arts, activism, scholarship. Vol 2. www.bozalta.org. Spring 2016.
  • Simons, Rosanna and Carissa Garcia, Eds. “Untamed.” bozalta: arts, activism, scholarship. Vol 1. www.bozalta.org. Spring 2014.
  • González, Wingston. “Retrato con Madona, santos y granero,” “Vida de parque,” and “Escribi a la iglecia de filadelfia De frente a la estatua de Colon en Livingston.” Translated by Rosanna Simons. Palabras: Dispatches from the Festival de la Palabra. 2013.
  • Simons, Rosanna. “Translated, Translator: Hybridized Language in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Multilingual Identities: Translators and Interpreters as Cross-Cultural Migrants, edited by Aurelia Klimkiewicz. 2013.

Honors & Awards

  • IUPLR/UIC Mellon Dissertation Fellowship (2020-2021)
  • Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy Sawyer Seminar Dissertation Fellowship (2020-2021)
  • Center for the Advancement of Teaching Instructional Improvement Grant (2019)
  • UCLA Dean’s Fund for Programs and Teaching Related to the 2016 Election (spring 2017)
  • UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship (2015-2016)
  • UCLA Graduate Summer Research Mentorship (2014)
  • UCLA Dept. of Chicana/o Studies Award for Contribution to the Department (2014)

Courses

Teaching Fellow

  • UCLA LGBTQ Studies Program, spring 2019
    • LGBTQS 183 “Femme in the Streets, Femme in the Sheets: Aesthetics, Sex, Politics”
  • UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies, winter 2019
    • CCS 188 “Decolonial Queers: Unsettling Bodies & Lands”
  • UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies, summer 2018
    • CCS 10A “History and Culture”

Teaching Assistant

  • UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies
    • CCS 10B “Social Structure and Contemporary Conditions”, winter 2018
    • CCS 10B “Social Structure and Contemporary Conditions” , winter 2017
    • CCS 10A “History and Culture”, fall 2016
    • CCS 10B “Social Structure and Contemporary Conditions”, summer 2016
    • CCS 101 “Theoretical Concepts in Chicana/o Studies”, spring 2015
    • CCS 10B “Social Structure and Contemporary Conditions”, winter 2015
    • CCS 10A “History and Culture”, fall 2014