Melinda Luisa de Jesús
Oakland, CA, USA | Poetry, mixed media sculpture, letterpress art | Resident in 2025
Dr. Melinda Luisa de Jesús is Associate Professor of Critical Ethnic Studies and former Chair of Diversity Studies at California College of the Arts. She writes and teaches about Filipinx/American cultural production, girl culture, monsters, and race/ethnicity in the United States. She edited Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory, the first collection of Filipina/American feminisms (Routledge 2005); her first collection of poetry, peminology, was published by Paloma Press in 2018. Melinda’s most recent article traces the legacy of Lynda Barry’s peminist aesthetic in the comics of Trinidad Escobar and Malaka Gharib.
As a US-UK Fulbright Visiting Scholar in 2012, Melinda convened the first international girl studies conference “After Girl Power: What’s Next?” at the University of York, UK. In Spring 2019 Melinda was the Muriel Gold Senior Visiting Professor at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada where she organized the Pinay Power II: Celebrating Peminisms in the Diaspora conference, the first gathering of Canadian Filipinas in the diaspora.
Melinda is also a classically-trained mezzo-soprano, an Aquarian, and a mom who loves hard liquor and admits an obsession with Hello Kitty. More about her at peminist.com.
