Waleska Solórzano received her Master’s Degree in Philosophy with a concentration in Ethics and Public Affairs as well as a CERG in Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University. From 2018 to 2019, Waleska lived in Indonesia, where she researched anti-human trafficking initiatives and the transformative healing potential of aesthetic practices as a Boren Fellow. Diaspora studies, minoritarian aesthetics, and queer theory motivate her academic practice. Her research implements utopian social and political thought as a framework for analyzing issues relating to contemporary art movements, identity formation, and migration, specifically as it relates to the Venezuelan diaspora, or what she terms the venespora. Currently, she is developing a digital platform for Venezuelan artists while pursuing her doctoral degree at Cornell University in the Romance Studies Department with Irina R. Troconis as her advisor and committee chair.
AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS
The Lourdes Benería Award, 2023.
The Summer Graduate Fellowship in Digital Humanities at Cornell, 2023.
The Latin American and Caribbean Studies Graduate Fellow Program at Cornell, 2023-2024.
The HASTAC Scholars Fellowship Program, Society for the Humanities, 2022-2024.
Graduate School Diversity Fellowship, Cornell University, 2022.
Mitchell Program’s U.S. Truth, Racial Healing, & Transformation Fellowship, George Mason University, 2022.
Campus Election Engagement Project Fellowship, Northern Virginia, Campus Election Engagement Project, 2020-2021.
The Dean’s Challenge Award, George Mason University, 2020.
The Critical Language Scholarship, Indonesia, United States Department of State, 2019.
The Boren Fellowship, Indonesia, United States Department of State, 2018-2019.
OSCAR Research Scholars Program, “Photography as Time Travel” Project, George Mason University, 2016-2017.
Street Dreams Magazine Photography Prize to Photograph the Tribeca Film Festival, New York, NY, 2016.
CONFERENCES
“The Living Archive Moves”, Interdisciplinary Conference, “Love, Violence, and Feminine Resistance: Dis-/placement, Reckoning, and Reconciliation” hosted by U.C. Santa Barbara, May 12, 2023.
“Exploring a Venesporic Lesbian Utopia in Fina Torres’ Liz in September”, Venezuelan Symposium, “(Re)Thinking Venezuela: Movement, Transit, Displacement” hosted by Cornell University, April 15, 2023.
“Photography as Queer Time Travel”, Northeast Modern Languages Association (NeMLA), NeMLA’s 54th Annual Convention, “Resilience” hosted by the University of Buffalo, March 24, 2023.
“Black Lives Matter at the U.S. - Mexico Border: An Analysis of U.S. Immigration Media Narratives”, Presenter, LSA (The Latina/o Studies Association) Conference, “Centering Blackness, Challenging Latinidad” hosted by University of Notre Dame, July 13, 2022.
“Queering the Venespora”, Presenter, philoSOPHIA’s 15th Annual Conference, "Entangled Ecologies: The Climate of Justice" hosted by George Mason University, June 4, 2022.
“Photography as Time Travel”, Presenter, ASPECT (the Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought) Conference hosted by Virginia Tech, April 24, 2020 (canceled due to COVID-19).
“Photography as Time Travel”, Presenter, Graduate Research Symposium hosted by College of William and Mary, April 2018.
LANGUAGES
Spanish: Native and Bilingual Proficiency
Bahasa Indonesia: Advanced Proficiency
Portuguese: Elementary Proficiency