José Esteban Muñoz (born 1967) is an American academic in the fields of Performance Studies, visual culture,[1] queer theory,[2] cultural studies, and critical theory.[3] His book Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (1999) examines queer and racial minority issues from a performance studies perspective. His second book, Cruising Utopia: the Then and There of Queer Futurity, was published by NYU Press in 2009. He has also co-edited Pop Out: Queer Warhol (1996) with Jennifer Doyle and Jonathan Flatley and Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America (1997) with Celeste Fraser Delgado. Muñoz is currently Professor in, and Chair of, the Department of Performance Studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. [1]
Muñoz was born in Havana, Cuba in 1967, shortly before relocating with his parents to the Cuban exile enclave of Hialeah, Florida the same year. He received his undergraduate education at Sarah Lawrence College and his doctorate from the Graduate Program in Literature at Duke University, where he studied under the tutelage of queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. He has written about artists, performers, and cultural figures including Vaginal Davis, Nao Bustamante, Carmelita Tropicana, Isaac Julien, Kevin Aviance, James Schuyler, and Andy Warhol.