Faculty Profiles

Ricardo Montez is associate professor of English and Art History. A performance studies scholar and art critic, Montez specializes in 20^th and 21^st century visual culture and performance. His book Keith Haring’s Line: Race and the Performance of Desire (Duke University Press, 2020) explores the complicated racial dynamics that shaped Haring’s art production and informed his collaborations with figures such as graffiti artist LA2, superstar diva Grace Jones, photographer Tseng Kwong Chi, and dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones. Montez’s current project, Cities of Night: Desire on the Margins and the Illumination of Form considers night as a structure of feeling in contemporary art. Inspired by John Rechy’s City of Night (1963), the book traverses the United States, examining how artists from across the country formally manipulate historical materials in their aesthetic elaborations of a minoritarian politics steeped in sexual desire. His writing has appeared in academic journals and exhibition catalogs, including Anthony Cudahy: Spinneret, Andy Warhol & Keith Haring: Party of Life, and Keith Haring/Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines.