Mellon postdoctoral fellow
Mario A. Gómez Zamora was born and raised in Tangancícuaro, Michoacán, México, the grandchild of Alicia Zepeda Madrigal, Serafin Zamora Ríos, Guadalupe Estrada Cacari, and Enrique Gómez Montelongo.
Mario is a queer P’urhépecha dancer, poet, teacher and scholar of queerness, gender and sexuality, migration, memory, Latinx and Latin American studies, dance studies, performance studies, and P’urhépecha studies. He earned his PhD and M.A. in Latin American and Latino Studies and Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, a master’s in teaching history at Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, and a B.A. in Secondary Education with a concentration in History at Normal Superior Juana de Asbaje in Michoacán.
Currently, Mario is a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities Center and Guest Faculty in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University, where he is working on his book project Queer P’urhépecha Histories and Performances Beyond Borders. Mario is receiving mentorship to complete his project from Dr. Jennifer DeVere Brody in TAPS. At Stanford, Mario teaches courses on dance studies, performance studies, queer theory, and Indigenous Methodologies.
In the summer of 2025, he was a UC Chancellor’s postdoctoral scholar at the Department of Anthropology at UCLA, where he was supported by Dr. Jason De León.
Mario's scholarship and poetry have been published by American Quarterly, Wicazo Sa Review, Genealogy, Pasados, Label Me Latina/o, Ethnic Studies Review (forthcoming), the Universidad Michoacana and the Centro Latinoamericano de Economía Humana Uruguay, the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Oxford University Press (forthcoming), and Los Angeles Review of Books. His article, “Breaking Queer Silences, Building Queer Archives, and Claiming Queer Indigenous P’urhépecha Methodologies,” won the Most Thought-Provoking article in the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association.
Mario is a first-generation graduate, and a member and co-founder of the P’urhépecha Working Group Parákata-Tzintzún and the P’urhépecha Studies Collective.
For more, check Mario's CV here.
Photo by Evan Ho
Research
In the last decade, my research has centered on the study of the P’urhépecha group in Michoacán and the United States. First, through my master’s program in Teaching History, I conducted an oral history research project with students from the Patamban’s middle school, with whom we collected histories of their town through the oral tradition. The histories were assembled into a book published by the Universidad Michoacana Press. I have also participated in different projects of recollection of histories of immigrants in my hometown, Tangancícuaro, as well as documenting the work of local artisans.
In my first solo book Queer P’urhépecha Histories & Performances Beyond Borders, I explore the cultural tensions that queer Indigenous P’urhépechas face when participating in their communities’ traditions. Through the lens of queer theory, dance studies, and performance studies, I analyze how Indigenous communities reproduce colonial violence against queer individuals in the present, and how queer P’urhépechas work toward new futures through danzas and performances in P’urhépecha fiestas and ceremonies while they claim their indigeneity as part of the collective in Michoacán and among those P’urhépechas who migrated to the Pacific Coast and Midwest of the United States. To trace the stories of marginalized Indigenous people in both their homelands and in sites of migration, I combine Indigenous methodologies, such as talking-while-walking through the landscape, with oral histories, semi-structured interviews, participant observations, poetry and archival research.
This is a project of hope, life, and resistance!
Fiesta Cristo Rey Chiquito. Patamban, Michoacán. Photo by Mario A. Gómez Zamora