Tania Islas Weinstein

Professor Tania Islas Weinstein joined the Department of Political Science as an Assistant Professor in the Fall of 2020. Her teaching and research are dedicated to analyzing struggles over who gets to be politically represented, how, and by whom, with a primary geographical focus on Latin America. She is especially interested in how such struggles shape constructions of gender, race, and class, as well different notions of community. Rather than focusing exclusively on electoral representation, she studies how artistic production and cultural policy are used as tools for political representation, education, and mobilization.

Professor Islas Weinstein is currently working on a book project, Politics in a House of Mirrors: Art, Nationalism, and Representation in Contemporary Mexico, which offers an account of the ways in which Mexico’s transition to formal electoral democracy and its implementation of market-oriented reforms transformed the country’s cultural policies and institutions, as well as the political content of its works of art. These changes, she shows, have profoundly shaped Mexico’s national narratives, forms of civic participation, and modes of political critique. Her work has appeared in journals including Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society and the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. She also writes creative nonfiction and art criticism, and has translated the work of the poet and musician Sun Ra into Spanish.

Professor Islas Weinstein previously taught at the University of Colorado Denver and in the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. Born and raised in Mexico City, she earned her BA in Political Science and International Relations from the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) and her MA and PhD from the University of Chicago.