Maia Gil’Adí is Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor of Latinx Studies and affiliated faculty in the Program in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (LACLxS). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Latino Studies, ASAP/Journal, MELUS: The Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the US, Studies in American Fiction, and edited volumes with Palgrave McMillan and Cambridge University Press. Her first book, Doom Patterns: Latinx Speculations and the Aesthetics of Violence, examines how portrayals of destruction paradoxically foreground pleasure in humor, narrative beauty, and the grotesque. She argues that through literary devices called “doom patterns”––devices such as thematic repetition, non-linear narration, character fragmentation, and unresolved plots––readers are consistently returned to instances of destruction and historical violence that reveal the ongoing nature of imperial, racial, and ethno-national violence.

Gil’Adí is currently at work on her second book project, tentatively titled, The Devil’s Recipe: Protest and Destruction in Hemispheric Venezuelan Imaginaries, which traces the scenes and sites of Venezuelan protest in a transnational context. Through literary, visual, and cultural analysis, Gil’Adí investigates the mobilization of what she calls “aesthetics of the unfinished” to understand how Venezuelan subjects in Caracas, Miami, Madrid, and beyond incite radical political identities. This interdisciplinary project resituates Venezuela in Latinx literary and cultural studies, through its attention to manifestations of disturbance, unrest, and failure. Beginning with her family’s migration to Venezuela because of two cataclysmic events—the Holocaust and the Spanish Civil War—The Devil’s Recipe investigates photography, building blueprints, soap operas, modern dance, film, literature, and the highway to show how notions of the unfinished cohere oppositional publics in Venezuela and its global diaspora.

In addition to her research, Gil’Adí serves as the Vice President of the Motherboard for the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP), was a founding executive committee member for the Latina and Latino Literature forum of the Modern Language Association, has served as co-chair of the Latinx section of the Latin American Studies Association, and serves on the editorial board of Label Me Latina/o and Palgrave’s SFF: A New Canon series. She is also the recipient of a six-month Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars. Her research in speculative fiction also extends to the digital stage: she is the creator and curator of The Zombie Archive, an archival resource for lovers of the zombie figure as well as zombie scholars, in which they can find various sources that center around how the zombie functions in the cultural imaginary as a source of anxiety and fascination. A resource for literature, film, art, cultural events, and scholarly sources surrounding the zombie in all its manifestations.

Gil’Adí teaches courses ranging from Latinx literature and comparative literature to aesthetic and literary theory. Below you will find a partial list of such courses:

• Introduction to Latinx Literature
• Monsters, Hauntings, and the Nation
• Race, Aesthetics, Speculation
• Her Body, Our Horror
• Reading in the Post/Apocalypse
• Multiethnic Speculative Fiction
• Latin/x Revolutionary Movements

Book

• Doom Patterns: Latinx Speculations and the Aesthetics of Violence (Duke University Press, 2025)

 Articles

• “Pedagogies of Black Horror.” Black Speculations/Black Futures, special issue of MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States, edited by Justin L. Mann and Samantha Pinto (forthcoming)
• “New Suns” (with Justin Mann). Special Issue Introduction. ASAP/Journal. 6.2 (2021): 244-251.
• “‘I think about you, X—’: Re-reading Junot Díaz after ‘The Silence.’” Latino Studies 18.4 (2020): 507-530.
• “Sugar Apocalypse: Sweetness and Monstrosity in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban.” Studies in American Fiction 47.1 (2020): 97-116.
• “Alexander Apóstol: Phantasmagoric Landscapes and Aesthetics of the Unfinished in Global-Venezuelan Imaginaries.” ASAP/J Latinx Speculative Fiction Cluster, “The Futures of Latinx Speculative Fictions” (December 2019)

Book Chapters

• “Fukú, Postapocalyptic Haunting, and Science-Fiction Embodiment in Junot Díaz’s ‘Monstro.’” Posthumanism and Latin(x) American Science Fiction, edited by Emily Maguire and Antonio Córdoba (Palgrave McMillan, 2022), pp. 91-122.
• “Latinx Speculative Fiction, Speculative Latinx.” Latinx Literature and Critical Futurities, 1992-2020, edited by William Orchard, Cambridge University Press (forthcoming). 

Works in Progress

• “Wood, Cloth, Plaster: Impenetrable Affects in Marisol”
• “Latinx Methods and the Politics of Praxis.” Introduction to Latinx Methods and the Politics of Praxis

Editorial Work

• Co-editor, “New Worlds of Speculation.” ASAP/Journal vol. 6, no. 2 (May 2021)
• Co-editor, Latinx Methods and the Politics of Praxis (in progress)
• Co-editor, Latinx Speculative Fictions (in progress)

Other Writing

• “In Love and Battle: Reflections on Ivelisse Rodriguez's Love War Stories.” Review of Ivalisse Rodriguez’s Love War Stories. Feminist Press, 2018. Pleiades Magazine vol. 39 no. 2 (Summer 2019), pp. 180-185.
• Review of Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Prime Meridian. Innsmouth Free Press, 2017. Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction (2019).
• Review of Ylce Irizarry. Chicana/o and Latina/o Fiction: The New Memory of Latinidad. Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2016. MELUS vol. 42 no. 3 (Fall 2017), pp. 231-233.
• Review of Laura Halperin. Intersections of Harm: Narratives of Latina Deviance and Defiance. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015. Latino Studies vol. 15 no. 3 (Autumn 2017), pp. 395-397.
• Review of Gordon K. Mantler. Power to the Poor: Black-Brown Coalition and the Fight for Economic Justice, 1960-1974. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Aztlán vol. 40 no. 2 (Fall 2015), pp. 275-279.

Interviews

• Villegas, Paulina. “How ‘Latinx’ united—and divided—a community seeking to redefine itself,” The Washington Post, April 10, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/02/latinx-meaning-controversy-culture/
• Froio, Nicole. “What’s at Stake as States Ban the Term ‘Latinx,’” Refinery 29, April 5, 2023. https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2023/04/11337053/states-ban-term-latinx-republicans-democrats
• Associated Press. “Connecticut Latino lawmakers propose banning ‘Latinx,’ calling it ‘offensive,’” NBC News February 1, 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/connecticut-latino-lawmakers-propose-banning-latinx-calling-offensive-rcna68712#
• Brown, Joel. “Don’t Open. Zombies Inside.” The Brink, October 27, 2023. https://www.bu.edu/articles/2023/building-an-online-zombie-movie-archive/