Familial field, Bandera, Texas, January 2023

Deanna Ledezma, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Tejanx scholar, writer, and educator specializing in Latinx Studies, the history and theory of photography, contemporary art, and visual culture. Her research investigates formations of Latinx and queer identities, Latin American diasporas, transnational labor histories, and genres of Latinx life writing, including artists’ books, zines, and photo-essays.

About

Deanna Ledezma earned her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) in 2022. She is the Postdoctoral Research Associate and Program Coordinator for the Inter-University Program for Latino Research/UIC Mellon Fellowship Program (2022–24). In addition to her research- and archive-based scholarship, she is a nonfiction writer and creative practitioner who collaborates with artists on installations, exhibitions, and public-facing events.

She has taught graduate- and undergraduate-level courses in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism and the Department of Liberal Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Class topics include: Identities in Modern and Contemporary Art; Photography: History, Theory, Practice; Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art; Latinx Art and Visual Culture; Literature of Latinx Diasporas; and, Latinx Life Writing.

A first-generation college student, she graduated with a B.A. in Art and a B.A. in English from Texas State University. Previous awards include the Santa Fe Art Institute Truth and Reconciliation Thematic Residency, the Inter-University Program for Latino Research/UIC Mellon Fellowship, the Edman-Waltz Fellowship, the Access to Excellence Fellowship, the Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois Fellowship, and the Chancellor’s Graduate Research Award.

Scholarly Publications

In Progress Book Manuscript

Unsettled Archives: Kinships and Diasporas in Latinx Photography

Forthcoming

“Archival Temporalities and Queer Kinships in the Photographs of Diana Solís.” In Feminist Visual Solidarities and Kinships, edited by Erina Duganne, Susan Richmond, and Genevieve Hyacinthe. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2025. (chapter manuscript in progress)

“Dismantling Latinx Monoliths: Representations of Material Culture, Communities, and Kinship in 1980s Chicago.” In The Routledge Handbook of American Material Culture Studies, edited by Kristin Hass (forthcoming, 2024)

“Review of Reclaiming the Americas: Latinx Art and the Politics of Territory by Tatiana Reinoza” Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture 6, no. 2 (forthcoming, April 2024)

Published

Ledezma, Deanna and Josh Rios. “Photographs from the Fields: The Digital Activism of the United Farm Workers.” In Reworking Labor, edited by Ellen Rothenberg and Daniel Eisenberg, 118–139. Chicago: The Institute for Curatorial Research & Practice at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2023.

“Review of Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990sToday.” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. caa.reviews, May 3, 2023.

Solís, Diana. Luz: Seeing the Space Between Us. Foreword and selected bibliography by Deanna Ledezma. Chicago: Flatlands Press, 2022.

“Selecting Views of Las Trampas: Contact Sheets by Fred E. Mang Jr. and David Jones at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives.” Photography & Culture 14, no. 1 (March 2021): 1–13.

“Regarding Family Photography in Contemporary Latinx Art.” Art Journal 79, no. 3 (Fall 2020): 80–89.

An opened copy of the chapbook Corona: Shadows of the Loved (2018) with a snapshot of Jackie Luna holding an accordion (1959). Photograph by Deanna Ledezma for “Beyond the Frame: A Conversation on Family Photography with Deanna Ledezma,” an interview by Sandra Riaño (Instagram: @localmujer) for The Latinx Project’s Intervenxions, May 2022.

Nonfiction Writing

We Eat All the Way Down to the Green. Chicago: self published, 2019. A testimonio-based chapbook made with my father for Re:Working Labor, exhibition curated by Ellen Rothenberg and Daniel Eisenberg, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Sullivan Galleries.

Corona: Shadows of the Loved. Memphis: Walls Divide Press, 2018.

“Arrangements.” In Imperceptibly and Slowly Opening: A Group Exhibition about Plants, edited by Caroline Picard and Devin King, 174–187. Chicago: Green Lantern Press, 2016.

Collaborations: Creative and Curatorial Projects

Contigo, Diana Solís, exhibition co-curated by Nicole Marroquin and Deanna Ledezma, Co-Prosperity, Chicago, August 5–September 23, 2023.

Ballad of the Uprooted, installation by Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero for Re:Working Labor, exhibition curated by Ellen Rothenberg and Daniel Eisenberg, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Sullivan Galleries, 2019.

Resounding the Archive at Echo Amphitheater with Josh Rios for the Santa Fe Art Institute’s Truth and Reconciliation Residency, 2019.

Photograph from Resounding the Archive at Echo Amphitheater, Carson National Forest, Arriba County, New Mexico, mixed media installation, 2019. Research on the land grant struggle supported by the Santa Fe Art Institute’s Truth and Reconciliation Residency.