Soares' research focuses on the relationship between cultural texts and social justice in Latinx cultures. Specifically, her projects analyze how the literature, music, television, and performance of the Spanish Caribbean and its diaspora contest normative ideas about gender and sexuality. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines literary and performance studies, Soares investigates the tactics adopted by Latinx cultural producers to center queer and femme subjects. Soares' current book manuscript, Salsa Epistemology, traces the presence of joy in Cuban and Puerto Rican diasporic texts from the 1960s to the present. Soares examines the gendered uses of joyful affect in an archive that includes early salsa music, the activism of the Young Lords, television show ¿Qué Pasa U.S.A.?, mourning vigils held after the Pulse nightclub shooting, and the music of contemporary rapper Pitbull. Soares argues for the political work performed by joy in each of these contexts.
keywords
popular culture, puerto rico, latinx, performance studies, queer theory, critical theory
