Dr. Stacy I. Macias is an associate professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at California State University, Long Beach. Her research and teaching are in feminist of color knowledges, feminist transnational activisms, and Chicana feminist cultural politics including Joteria Studies, butch-femme desire, and lesbian and femme counter-publics. Through an overlapping critical gender, ethnic, transnational, and queer studies framework, she exposes students to inextricable connections between local and global contexts while her research explores invisiblized, forgotten sites of meaningful knowledge.

Before earning a PhD in Gender Studies from UCLA, Macias co-founded Tongues, a queer, lesbian, and bisexual women of color project and zine, and created the lesbian and bisexual women’s program, L.U.N.A (Latinas Understanding the Need for Action) at Bienestar. Currently, she is a board member of Long Beach based, O.R.A.L.E (Organizing Rooted in Abolition, Liberation, and Empowerment).

Among her publications are “A Gay Bar, Some Familia, and Latina Butch-Femme: Rounding out the Eastside Circle at El Monte’s Sugar Shack” in East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte, and “Latina and Chicana Butch/Femme in Literature and Culture” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. With Dr. Liliana Gonzalez, she co-edited the Journal of Lesbian Studies, “Chicana Lesbians: Re-Engaging the Iconic Text ‘The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About.’” This two-volume special issue revisits Carla Trujillo’s 1991 iconic anthology, which is the first critical and creative text to address the complex lives of Chicana lesbians.

As a self-identified Chicana lesbian-queer femme from South El Monte, Macias finds infinite inspiration in the everyday practices of historically marginalized communities like the working-class homegirls, cha-chas, and queer relatives around whom she grew up. These inspirations also translate aesthetically into her role as a wardrobe stylist for several independent films, including the upcoming AdeRisa produced feature length film, La Serenata.