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Alyssa Quintanilla
Assistant Professor of Art History and American Studies
Office (American Studies):
Sam Jones Hall 207
Email :
[[acquintanilla]]
Areas of Specialization:
U.S.-Mexico borderlands, Latine/x Art and Culture, Memory studies
Professor Quintanilla's work focuses on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, Latine/x Art and Culture, and Memory studies. She arrived at William & Mary as a joint appointment in American Studies in 2025 after teaching for four years in the English Department at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. She holds a Ph.D. in Critical and Cultural Studies from the University of Pittsburgh (2021), where she completed a dissertation titled "A Matter of Waste and Bodies: Life, Death, and Materiality in the United States-Mexico Borderlands 1990 to the Present." She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including Clements Center for Southwest Studies, David J. Weber Research Fellowship for the Study of Southwestern America at the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University; the First Book Institute Fellowship from the Center for American Literary Studies at Penn State University; and the Barbara Thom Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California (Declined). Professor Quintanilla has published articles in Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Studies in the Novel, The Digital Review, Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, and Journal of Media Art Study and Theory, among other venues. She also has created Vistas de la Frontera, a digital memorial for migrants who have died while crossing the United States-Mexico border. Her current book project in progress is titled Markers, Monuments, Memorials in the United States-Mexico Borderlands.