Kristie Soares (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Women & Gender Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and an active performance artist. Both her research and her performance work explore queerness in Caribbean and Latinx communities. Soares’s research focuses on 19th-21st century Latinx literature and media, with a specialization in queer Caribbean cultural production. Her current book project, Salsa Epistemology, engages with salsa—a music and dance tradition—to show how embodied playfulness figures as an integral part of queer activism in the Spanish Caribbean diaspora. Her work has been published in Frontiers, Letras Femeninas, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Remezcla and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Like her research, Soares’s teaching draws heavily on queer and performance methodologies. She encourages students to “try out” intellectual concepts using their bodies, through decolonial pedagogies such as Spoken Word Poetry and Theatre of the Oppressed. She also facilitates performance poetry workshops in schools and juvenile detention facilities. Her own performance work is invested in making political statements in and through the body.