Laura Grappo is Associate Professor in the American Studies Department and affiliate faculty in the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. Her research and teaching focuses on Latinx culture and politics, queer studies, critical race theory, contemporary US politics, and media representation.

Her first book, entitled Conjured Bodies: Queer Racialization in Contemporary Latinidad (University of Texas Press, 2022), examines the ways in which the ambiguity surrounding the categorization of Latinidad – as a race, ethnicity, or combination thereof – produces a useable and transferable semiotics of difference that has critical implications for broader constructions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. It reveals how denigrating stories told about Latinidad are significant not only because of their use value for anti-immigration policy enforcement; racial hierarchization; and the general devaluation of Latinx peoples, communities, and cultures. As the sites examined in the book suggest, the concept of Latinidad has also served as a fungible entity for various political ends, often having very little to do with Latinidad itself.

Conjured Bodies received Honorable Mention for Outstanding Book by the Latinx Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association, and Honorable Mention from the Popular Culture Association's John Leo and Dana Heller Award Committee for the Best Book in LGBTQ Studies. Professor Grappo's work can also be found in the journal Latino Studies.