A Symposium
In celebration of Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s 2026 Retirement and Lifelong Research on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
(models: Alicia Gaspar de Alba as the Elder, and Alicia Billalobos, UCLA Chicana/o Studies alumna, as the Younger)
“I will never be a woman, who as woman will serve a man,” Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
February 26, 2026
Northwest Campus Auditorium, UCLA
Organized by the UCLA Center for Musical Humanities in partnership with the Dean of Social Sciences and the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies
Co-sponsored by The Center for 17th & 18th Century Studies, the Chicano Studies Research Center, and the Center for the Study of Women/Barbara Streisand Center
Free and open to the public, but all attendees, including participants and audience members, must register online. Lunch and reception will be provided for registered guests only.
“Otro Corazón 3: Queering Sor Juana” builds on past symposia organized by Alicia Gaspar de Alba in her “Corazón” series,1 and is offered as part of a year-long celebration of her 32-year academic career at UCLA, focusing on her lifetime of research and creative engagement with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the 17th-century Mexican nun/poet/scholar who is hailed all over the world as the “first feminist of the Americas” and the Mexican “Tenth Muse.”
About Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695)
A child prodigy who learned to read at age three, had her first poem published at eight, and won a tournament of minds against forty scholars from the University of Mexico at eighteen, Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, aka, Sor Juana, was a famous and controversial figure in her own time. At 19, she joined the Order of Saint Jerome and became a cloistered nun in the Convent of Santa Paula (now the University of the Cloister of Sor Juana) until her death at 47 years of age. She stands alongside the Virgin of Guadalupe and Frida Kahlo as the female trinity of Mexican cultural icons.
Sor Juana’s image has graced Mexican currency since the late 1980s, and she is recognized as one of the main literary figures of the Spanish Golden Age. In the 1920s, the first Sorjuanista, a Latin Americanist scholar and suffragist named Dorothy Schons at the University of Texas, baptized Sor Juana as the “first feminist” of the Americas, Because of the sublimity of her verse, most especially the love poetry she wrote to other women, she was given, in her lifetime, the title “la décima musa,” or the “Tenth Muse,” which refers to her excellence in the décima form of poetry, but is also an allusion to the Greek lesbian poet, Sappho, who was also called the “the tenth muse” by Plato in the seventh century BCE. She left behind four thick volumes of her collected works, including plays, poetry, and prose. Of these, her most famous pieces are “Hombres necios,” a satirical poem about male double standards, her “Respuesta a Sor Filotea,” considered to be her intellectual autobiography, and a very long and intricate poem about her inner battle between reason and passion, “Primero Sueño,” or “First Dream.”
Sor Juana is legendary today for her passionate defense of a woman’s right to be a scholar and to publish her work. In her 27 years as a cloistered nun, Sor Juana was relentlessly persecuted for her genius and her defiance of the Catholic Church’s dictates regarding the female sex. Because she refused to abide by these limitations, and because she had the support and backing of the Viceregal court and influential nobles in Europe and Mexico, Juana’s celebrity flourished in her own lifetime, and she saw two volumes of her collected works published in Spain. In 1694, to mark her 25th anniversary as a “bride of Christ,” Sor Juana renounced her scholarly life, her extensive library, and her correspondence with the world and renewed her vows to the Hieronymite order in a document she signed in her own blood, calling herself “la peor de todas” (the worst of all women/the worst of all nuns). She died a year later, in 1695, while caring for her fellow nuns during an epidemic. What happened to this most accomplished and rebellious of colonial women, this most enlightened mind of the Spanish Golden Age? Why did she forsake everything that had given meaning to her cloistered life? Read Sor Juana’s Second Dream.
About “La Profe”
Years before she even began her PhD coursework, Gaspar de Alba, or “La Profe” as she is known by her students, was already deeply immersed in researching Sor Juana’s life, relationships, and publications. Her ten-year research project into Sor Juana culminated in the novel, Sor Juana’s Second Dream, published by University of New Mexico Press inn 1999, and translated into Spanish and German. The novel was subsequently adapted to a theater play (“The Nun and the Countess”), an opera (“Juana”), and a forthcoming film (“Juana de Asbaje”).
The research Gaspar de Alba did for her novel could have earned her a PhD in itself, but instead she went on to complete a PhD in American Studies from the University of New Mexico, specializing in Chicano/a art, popular culture, Chicana feminisms, and sexuality studies. Her dissertation, “Mi Casa [No] Es Su Casa: The Cultural Politics of the Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation Exhibition,” was awarded the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize for Best Dissertation in American Studies by the American Studies Association. That same year, her first collection of short fiction, The Mystery of Survival and Other Stories, won the inaugural Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Premio Aztlán for Emerging Chicano/a Writers. These two awards set the stage for a career that was to be divided between her academic scholarly pursuits and her creative works.
Hired in 1994 (the same year she completed her dissertation in American Studies at the University of New Mexico) as a founding faculty member of the Cesar Chavez Department of Chicana/o Studies (renamed a few years ago to Chicana/o and Central American Studies), with joint appointments in the UCLA English and Gender Studies Departments, Gaspar de Alba was instrumental in bringing an interdisciplinary, cultural studies, feminist, queer, and bilingual creative writing sensibility to the new Chicana/o Studies program that resulted from the 1993 Hunger Strike at UCLA. She published her first monograph, Chicano Art Inside/Outside the Master’s House, in 1998, and her first novel, Sor Juana’s Second Dream, in 1999, and earned early tenure at UCLA in 1999. She served as Interim Director of LGBT Studies from 2001-2002, Associate Director of the Chicano Studies Research Center from 2002-2004, and advanced to Full Professor in 2005. She Chaired the Cesar Chavez Department from 2007-2010, and the LGBTQ Studies Program from 2013-2019. She has published 13 books, among them academic texts and anthologies, award-winning novels, and collections of poetry and short fiction. Her most recent academic book, [Un]Framing the “Bad Woman”: Sor Juana, Malinche, Coyolxauhqui and Other Rebels with a Cause (2014) was awarded the Best Book Award from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, which showcases her research into Sor Juana and other Mexican and Chicana archetypes of feminist resistance to patriarchy.
To see Gaspar de Alba’s other books, please refer to her website: https://aliciagaspardealba.net
OTRO CORAZON 3: QUEERING SOR JUANA
SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM
VENUE: NORTHWEST CAMPUS AUDITORIUM, UCLA
9am: Registration
9:30: Welcome and Introductory Remarks by Professor Raymond Knapp and Dean Abel Valenzuela
10:30-12 noon: Panel 1. La Décima Musa: Classic Sor Juana
Speaker: Cesar Favila, UCLA
Speaker: Charlene Villaseñor Black, Oxford University
Speaker: Emilie Bergman, UC Berkeley
Moderator: Gabriela Rodriguez Gomez (UCLA Chicana/o Studies PhD)
12-1pm: Boxed Lunch
1:30-3pm: Panel 2. “La Peor de Todas”: Sapphic Sor Juana
Speaker: Emma Perez, University of Arizona
Speaker: Alma López, UCLA
Speaker: Carla Lucero, Independent Opera Composer
Moderator: Ariel Hernandez (UCLA Chicana/o Studies grad student)
Coffee Break
4-5:30pm: Performances
4 Arias from “JUANA”2 – A Spanish-language chamber opera based on the historical novel, Sor Juana’s Second Dream3 by Alicia Gaspar de Alba. Music by Carla Lucero.
Libretto by Carla Lucero and Alicia Gaspar de Alba
Showcase Program
- “Fili”, performed by Meagan Martin (Mezzo-Soprano) as Sor Juana
- “Hombres necios” performed by Meagan Martin and Maria Valdes-Gomez (Soprano) as la Condesa
- “Sin vos” (abbreviated version) performed by Maria Valdes-Gomez
- “Amor eterno” performed by Meagan Martin and Maria Valdes-Gomez
- Accompanied by pianist, Peter Walsh
- Screening of “Sin Vos” video (opera on film, recorded at the Ebell of Los Angeles, sung by Michelle Allie Drever as la Condesa. María Dominique Lopez portrays Sor Juana. Film created by Carson Gilmore of Vox Visceralis. Music recorded in Prague with BNO Chamber Orchestra through PARMA Recordings and is available on Navona Records)
Q&A: Carla Lucero and Alicia Gaspar de Alba
6pm: Reception
Co-Sponsors
Impresario ($5,000+)
- UCLA College, Dean of Social Sciences Division
- Center for Musical Humanities
Divo/Diva ($2,500+)
Aficionadxs ($1000+)
- Center for 17th & 18th Century Studies
The Chorus Line ($500+)
- Center for the Study of Women/Barbara Streisand Center
The Spotlight Society ($100+)
FOR MORE INFORMATION: CONTACT PROFESSORS KENCY CORNEJO (kcornejo@g.ucla.edu) and/or YESSICA GARCIA HERNANDEZ (yessicagarciah@g.ucla.edu).
NOTES
- Previous Corazón-themed symposia have included Otro Corazon 2: Queering Chicanidad in the Arts: A Valentine to Tomás Ybarra Frausto (2017); Sex y Corazón: Queer and Feminist Theory at the Vanguard of the New Chicana/o Studies (2010); Otro Corazón: Queering the Art of Aztlán (2001); and Puro Corazón: A Symposium of Chicana Art (1995). In Fall 2019, as a prequel to the world premier of JUANA with Opera UCLA, Gaspar de Alba organized “You Imagine Me, and I Exist: The Afterlives of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. ↩︎
- “JUANA” had its world premiere with Opera UCLA in Fall 2019 with two sold-out performances and a glowing review in the Los Angeles Times. The opera had its East Coast premiere in August 2022 with the Delle’Arte Opera Ensemble in New York City. ↩︎
- Sor Juana’s Second Dream (1999) explores Sor Juana’s life as a 17th-century woman writer and proto-feminist nun, integrating excerpts from Sor Juana’s own writings and imaginary letters and journal entries into the historical fiction. The novel was awarded the Latino Hall of Fame Award for Best Historical Novel in 2000. ↩︎
Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Ph.D. 