The LA&PS Research Office is pleased to introduce one of the LA&PS Postdoctoral Fellows, Juan Carlos Mezo-González. Dr. Juan Carlos Mezo-González is a historian of sexuality and visual culture in the Americas who holds a PhD in History from the University of Toronto. As a recipient of the LA&PS Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (2024-2025), he is currently working on the research project “Evil Seduction: A Queer History of the Devil in Mexican Popular Culture,” supervised by Professor Anne Rubenstein, from the Department of History. This project examines how, from the early twentieth century to the present, demonic imagery has been used in Mexican popular culture to confront or uphold sexism, homophobia, and heteronormativity, as well as to grapple with the legacies of colonialism and state violence. The project focuses on different types of sources, including periodicals, films, graphic arts, literature, theatre, and digital media.
The research that Dr. Mezo-González is currently conducting constitutes the groundwork for his second book-length project, which builds on and engages with historiographies of popular religion, popular culture, the history of sexuality, and the Devil in both Mexican and other geographical contexts. By focusing on modern Mexico and adopting a queer lens, the book aims to advance our understanding of how different societies have coped with the concept of evil across time and how they visualize those conceptions in their cultural production. It also aims to advance our understanding of how that cultural production is closely connected to social and cultural phenomena that include armed conflicts, colonial enterprises, revolutionary episodes, ideas of race, gender, and sexuality, nationalism, among many others.