Diana Aldrete is an Assistant Professor of Language and Culture Studies and Human, as well as a visual artist based in Hartford, CT. Her research, pedagogy, and artistic practice, interrogate the intersections of contemporary Mexican, Latin American, and Latinx literary and cultural studies; Mexico-U.S. border studies; feminist and queer theory; environmental humanities; and human rights studies. 

She is a recipient of the 2025-26 American Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW) which supports the completion of her manuscript, Between Land and Death: Women Writing for Justice in Mexico. The project examines how literary production, primarily by contemporary Mexican women writers, has become part of the political dialectic on anti-feminicidal violence, questioning notions of justice and placing literature in conversation with political discourses and forms of activism.  

Aldrete’s scholarly and creative work explore themes of violence, erasure, and ecological interconnection across literary and visual media. She has published poetry and short fiction, and her visual art has been exhibited in several venues throughout Connecticut. Her first solo exhibition, Invisible Suffering (2022), supported by the Free Center’s “Independent Artist Fund,” interrogates the historical resonance of unseen suffering in the year 2020. Her current art project, Ech.o Locations, examines the ecologies of the Great Lakes and the relationships between water, land, and their human and non-human inhabitants. Integrating field research, visual anthropology, sound studies, and visual art (photography and painting), the project underscores the urgent need to protect freshwater ecosystems.