Monica Espaillat Lizardo

Cross-Listed PhD Student, Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies

Mónica (she/her) is a direct-entry Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of History and the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. Her current dissertation project examines the construction of Dominican citizenship from the Trujillo dictatorship (1930 – 1961) to 2012. The project investigates the formalization of the Dominican historical imaginary, the introduction of legal and institutional structures aimed at surveillance and citizen education, and the construction of a shared social identity via the use and protection of national-patriotic symbols. By triangulating the discipline’s traditional archives with oral histories and ephemeral archives she argues that the Dominican state undertook a eugenicist nation-making project that created, enforced, and enforces Dominicans of Haitian descent and Trans Dominicans as impossible citizens. Mónica has been the recipient of the Junior Jackman
Fellowship in the Humanities and the Vanier Graduate Scholarship. Her work as an educator is motivated by her desire to create accessible (un)learning spaces, particularly for students who exist on the margins of the education system.