Office Hours with… Alexandra T. Vazquez

Earlier this month, Alexandra T. Vazquez was moving into her new Yale office when she came across a poster of an event she organized when she was a postdoctoral associate in Yale’s Program in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration from 2006 to 2008.

“We did a showing of this major documentary about the Cuban performer La Lupe with the filmmaker Ela Troyano,” Vazquez said. “It was so touching to be reminded of something I programmed as a young scholar. And here I am almost 20 years later at a very different point in my career still returning to performers such as La Lupe in my research and teaching, and still receiving the vital support to do so. It’s a real pleasure and privilege to have made this boomerang return back to Yale.”

Vazquez is a newly appointed professor of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Previously a professor at New York University, she is particularly interested in performance theory, U.S. Latina/x and Latin American studies, and Caribbean aesthetics. Her most recent book, “The Florida Room” (Duke University Press), was named one of the best books of 2022 by Pitchfork, the online music publication.

In the latest edition of Office Hours, a Q&A series that introduces new Yale faculty members to the broader community, Vazquez discusses her Miami roots, exploring New Haven’s musical past, and her love of the live event.

In “The Florida Room,” you explore Miami’s rich musical and cultural history. Are you from Miami?

Alexandra T. Vazquez: I was born and raised in Miami. Born and raised in the music that surrounded me there, and I think that was why I became an academic. It took going to college to learn that I could think about those sounds in deep, philosophical ways, that music wasn’t just a given phenomenon, but that it came from people and it came from places. Miami has been a mercurial muse throughout my life. I hasten to add that for me Miami means the Caribbean, it means Western Africa and Latin America, it means islands everywhere. All of these different locations arrive to and depart from Miami in really fascinating ways.

How would you sum up your research focus?

Vazquez: I’m a performance studies theorist. My work is very capacious about the word “performance” and can mean music, theater, visual arts, dance, or everyday enactments that happen as you walk down the street. I don’t believe in separating the arts into different fields of study because this does a real disservice to their ancient interdisciplinarity. Performance is my primary intellectual and theoretical entry point into the world.

As an example, I’m teaching a first-year seminar called “Worlds in Performance.” The first class I taught was introducing students to the history of The Monterey Club, which was a Black-owned venue here in the Dixwell neighborhood. It was a legendary place for Black performance for over five decades. We listened together to an album recorded live there by Johnny “Hammond” Smith in 1962. We listened to the sounds of the audience as much as we took in the music. For the students, it is so important for them to imagine what was here and who remains in New Haven.

What’s your latest book project?

Vazquez: I am working on this user-friendly book called “Performance on Performance,” in which I want to hold people’s hands through this thrilling activity we call performance studies. How can we talk and write and congregate around performance? How does performance push our creative and critical work towards unforeseen directions? The book takes up performances from different cities including Havana, Palermo, Miami, Napoli, New Orleans, Granada. I’m using a lot of different geographical locations, different languages, objects very old and objects very new, to help model for a reader the kinds of important movements we need to make when we study something. Because performance will never stay in any assigned place. These locations are not arbitrary, as all of them bear some relationship to Spanish colonization, but they are often not put into conversation because of the dynamic and complex histories they hold. The main premise of the book is basically “go with it”; go with where any performance takes you. 

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

Vazquez: I love seeing live music because I am a strong believer in the live event. Lifting heavy weights and taking walks keep me well. I love getting close to the marshes and wetlands that hold the Connecticut shoreline. They’re like old/new friends. I affectionately call them “Everglades North.” I travel a lot and will often bring (out of choice and necessity) my two “research assistants” — my daughters — with me. We go to the archives and museums and interview people. They ask questions that I sometimes forget. They point out details that I might not see or hear.

What’s your favorite food in Miami?

Vazquez: Cuban food. Absolutely. You know ham croquettes? It’s like our Cuban penicillin.