Photo of Cristina Mejia Visperas

Cristina
M.
Visperas

Assistant Professor of Communication
Cristina Visperas studies the intersections of race, state violence and the life sciences.
Academic Program Affiliation: 
(213) 705-2043
Photo of Cristina Mejia Visperas
Cristina Visperas studies the intersections of race, state violence and the life sciences.
Expertise: 
Arts and Culture, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Health, History, Race and Ethnicity, Science, Social Justice

Cristina
M.
Visperas

Assistant Professor of Communication
(213) 705-2043
Academic Program Affiliation: 

Tabs

Building on her background in molecular and cellular biology, Cristina Mejia Visperas examines the politics and cultural histories of the life sciences, with a focus on race and state violence. Her book, Skin Theory: Visual Culture and the Postwar Prison Laboratory (NYU Press, 2022), is an abolitionist study of postwar medical science research conducted in prisons and the emergence of modern American bioethics. Her next project addresses the political role of emotions in the Anthropocene. 

Visperas currently sits on the editorial board of  Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, an open-access academic journal publishing feminist texts on science and technology.

Books

Skin Theory: Visual Culture and the Postwar Prison Laboratory (2022, NYU Press).

Journal Articles

“The Able-Bodied Slave” (2019, Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies).

“Nothing/More: Black Studies and Feminist Technoscience,” co-editor (2016, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience).

“African Kaposi’s Sarcoma in the Light of Global AIDS: Antiblackness and Viral Visibility,” co-author (2014, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry).

“Chicken Embryonic Brain: An In-Vivo Model for Verifying Neural Stem Cell Potency,” co-author (2013, Journal of Neurosurgery).

Courses

COMM 476: Crisis and Culture: The Anthropocene
COMM 649: Methodologies in Cultural Studies