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Dr. Itzel Corona Aguilar is an undocumented artist and writer from Ciudad Mexico, Mexico, currently based in San Antonio, Texas. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her research interests focus on migration, detention/incarceration, queer and trans fugitivity, and faith. Itzel’s work engages with Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, Chicanx feminist thought, prison abolition, and religious studies. Currently, Itzel is a Just Transformations Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities at Pennsylvania State University. She has been an organizer who has built power to abolish immigration detention in the United States; consultant for Third Wave Fund, an activist fund led by and for women of color, intersex, queer and trans women; and has published in The Hemispheric Institute. Itzel has been an artist at the annual conference of the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldua; co-organizer with Nicole Fleetwood of the Prison Studies Working Group at Rutgers University; panelist at MoMaPS1’s Marking Time Exhibition and presenter at the Indigenous and Migrant Justice Symposium Part I with David Aruquipa Pérez, Chuquimamani-Condori, and Red de Pueblos Transancionales; and has spoken about immigration detention, queer and trans politics, and embodied religion in New York, New Jersey, and South Texas.
Itzel Corona Aguilar recibió su Ph.D. del Departamento de Estudios de Género y Sexualidad de la Mujer de la Universidad de Rutgers, New Brunswick. Su interés de investigación se centra en la migración, la detención/encarcelamiento, la fugitividad queer y trans, y la fe. El trabajo de Itzel se relaciona con los estudios negros, los estudios indígenas, el pensamiento feminista chicanx, los estudios sobre la abolición de las prisiones y los estudios religiosos. Actualmente, Itzel es Mellon becaria postdoctoral de Just Transformations en el Instituto de Humanidades de la Universidad Estatal de Pensilvania. Ha sido una organizadora que ha construido poder para abolir la detención de inmigrantes en Estados Unidos; miembra del Third Wave Fund, un fondo activista liderado por y para mujeres de color, intersexuales, queer y trans; y ha publicado en el Instituto Hemisférico. Itzel ha sido artista en la conferencia anual de la Sociedad para el Estudio de Gloria Anzaldúa; coorganizadora con Nicole Fleetwood del Grupo de Trabajo de Estudios Carcelarios de la Universidad de Rutgers, New Brunswick; panelista en la exposición Marking Time de MoMaPS1 y presentadora en el Simposio de Justicia Indígena y Migrante Parte I con David Aruquipa Pérez, Chuquimamani-Condori y Red de Pueblos Transnacionales; y ha hablado sobre la detención de inmigrantes, la política queer y trans y la religión encarnada en Nueva York, Nueva Jersey y el sur de Texas.
Itzel Corona Aguilar, Ph.D., was born in Ciudad Mexico and moved between Mexico City and Tijuana before migrating to the U.S. at seven years old. In July 2001, Corona Aguilar, along with her parents and two siblings, migrated to San Antonio, Texas. As an undocumented person, Corona Aguilar has experienced anti-immigrant forces first-hand and has witnessed members of her own community face these forms of violence as well.
Since 2011, Corona Aguilar has been an organizer and educator in movements working for migrant justice and sex-work liberation. Raised and politicized in South-Texas, Corona Aguilar become involved in anti-detention and anti-prison initiatives with organizations like Grass Roots Leadership and United We Dream, as well as local faith-based organizations providing direct services to migrants detained near Austin, Texas and neighboring cities.
Since a young age, Corona Aguilar is guided by the presence of her paternal grandmother, Cristina Paredes, who was a Zapoteca descendant, tianguera, and a wise practitioner of spiritual medicine. Corona Aguilar’s interests in understanding how migrants’ sacred ontologies shape visions of liberation stems from her upbringing and years of community organizing and strategizing in FL, GA, CA, TX, NY, NJ, and VA.
In addition to her community organizing work, Corona Aguilar was awarded the Hindi Yuva, “Guru Vandana” Rutgers University Teaching Award in 2021. As an educator, Corona Aguilar’s goals are to critically analyze to expose the carceral and racialized logics of systems of detention and incarceration. In doing this work, she has also developed tools for teaching. Her pedagogy is informed by and builds upon the intellectual labors of Dylan Rodriguez, Ruth Wilson Gilmore and others who have articulated abolitionist pedagogy and methodology through their scholarship. The courses that she teaches follow a syllabus that is constructed to engage with methods and ideas that deconstruct and demystify the prison and the border wall as normalized infrastructure to reveal the theoretical similarities that underpins them. Critical thought and expanding the boundaries of the political imaginary are central pedagogy, so Corona Aguilar continuously encourages her students to imagine a world without prisons and to consider what projects might facilitate justice in a transformative sense.
Currently, Corona Aguilar is a Mellon Just Transformations Fellow at the Institute for Humanities and Center for Black Digital Research at Pennsylvania State University. She is also part of the Programa Permanente de Investigadoras e Investigadores Visitantes at El Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios de Genero de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM) where she is developing her book manuscript: Abolition and Faith: Embodying the Sacred in Migrant Liberation Narratives. This book tracks the violent histories that have produced racialized and gendered representation in the neoliberal immigrant rights movement, while identifying and examining the formation of what this project calls “migrant liberation narratives”—the narratives of those in immigration detention centers or migrants impacted by detention—that produce alternative, and oftentimes, liberatory understandings of border politics, criminalization, migration, and faith.