Biography
Aitor Bouso-Gavín (he/him/él) is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the College of the Holy Cross. In 2024, he received a Ph.D. in Hispanic Literatures and Linguistics with a Graduate Certificate in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. An interdisciplinary educator and scholar of Caribbean and Latinx Studies, his teaching and research examine the intersections of literature, visual culture, performance, and history through the lenses of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Medical Humanities.
Before joining the College of the Holy Cross, Aitor taught at Harvard University, Tufts University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. At Harvard, he served as Lecturer and Faculty Director of Latinx Studies for the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights. He also launched the Afro-Latinidades and World Diasporas Initiative (ALWDI), a public humanities program dedicated to amplifying Afro-Latinx histories, cultural production, and global diasporic connections through lectures, artist talks, and community engagement.
He is deeply committed to mentoring students of all backgrounds and has extensive experience supporting first-generation and LGBTQIA+ students as they navigate higher education. His teaching is grounded in inclusive, anti-racist, and community-based pedagogies that foster critical inquiry, intellectual curiosity, and collaborative learning. Across his courses, he encourages students to connect literary and cultural texts to pressing social, political, and historical questions while developing the analytical and communicative skills necessary to engage critically with an increasingly globalized world.
His scholarship explores how Caribbean and Latinx writers and artists engage with the enduring legacies of colonialism, racial and feminicidal violence, migration, and displacement while imagining creative practices of repair, relationality, and resistance. His current book project, Genealogies of the Wound: Decolonial Healing and Resistance in Caribbean and Latinx Literature and Art, advances the novel concept of the wound as a theoretical framework for examining the intersections of epistemic erasure, historical trauma, embodiment, and decoloniality. Through a transdisciplinary analysis of literature, visual art, and performance, the book foregrounds Black and Indigenous cultural production in the Americas as a site of decolonial resistance that envisions insurgent forms of healing, survival, and futurity as alternatives to dominant biomedical, scientific, and secular paradigms of care.
His research has been supported by the Mellon Sawyer Dissertation Fellowship in Race and Visual Culture in the Americas (2023–24), and his published scholarship has received the Victoria Urbano Award from the Association of Gender and Sexuality Studies (AGSS). His work appears in Latino Studies; Revista de Género y Sexualidades; Chiricú: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, La escuela__, Latinx Talk, and others.
Publications
“Wounded from within: Trauma and the Body in Yesika Salgado’s and Rigoberto González’s Latinx Life Writings.” Latino Studies, vol. 24, no. 3, 2026. Forthcoming.
“Reaching through the Wound to Connect in Isaac Gómez’s La Ruta and Judith Hernández’s Juárez Series.” Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades, vol. 52, no. 1, 2026, pp. 53–74.
“Confronting the Wound: Feminicidio on the U.S.-Mexico Border.” Chiricú: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, vol. 7, no. 1, 2023, pp. 56–79.
“Epistemologies of Healing: Afro-Caribbean Diasporic Art as a Pedagogy of Decolonial Resistance.” La Escuela__, 8 Aug. 2025.
“Afro-Latinidades and World Diasporas: Community-Building through Public Programs and Curricular Development.” ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America, 4 Sept. 2025