Education

Exp. 2026—Ph.D. Feminist Studies, University of California Santa Barbara
Dissertation: Paisa Imaginaries: Popular Culture, Creative Labor, and Queer Mexicanidades in Southern California, 1980-Present
Committee: Eileen Boris, Mireille Miller-Young, D. Inés Casillas

2022—M.A. Feminist Studies, University of California Santa Barbara
Thesis: Paisa Aesthetics: Streetwear Fashion and Latinx Aesthetic Labor

2017—B.S.  Business Administration, Cum Laude, Simmons College

2015—Fashion Marketing, Pasadena City College

Bio

Alex Mireles (she/they) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Her research examines identity, queerness, and global capitalism through the lens of aesthetic movements in fashion, media, and visual cultures. Her dissertation, Paisa Imaginaries: Popular Culture, Creative Labor, and Queer Mexicanidades in Southern California, 1980-Present, explores the queer potential and world-making capabilities within popular culture, focusing on Mexican regional music subcultures, fashion and style politics, new media and film, and queer nightlife. Mireles investigates how these cultural forms intersect and reconfigure expressions of identity and belonging under global capitalism.

Mireles’s work engages deeply with the materiality of fashion and style, analyzing how Latinx identity is performed and commodified through clothing, beauty, and aesthetics. She draws on theoretical frameworks from queer of color critique and materialist feminist analysis to explore how Latinx bodies move through and are shaped by global circuits of culture and capital, offering critical insights into the political economy of Latinx representation and creative labor.

In addition to her academic work, Mireles brings extensive experience in creative production. As a co-founder of the Queer Arts Collective, she fosters spaces for artistic expression and community engagement. Her professional background as a wardrobe stylist, line producer, and assistant director informs her scholarly approach, allowing her to bridge industry knowledge with scholarly insight to contribute to both fields. By highlighting the material and affective dimensions of cultural production, her work offers new insights into the political and economic structures shaping Latinx representation and creative labor. Mireles’s interdisciplinary approach underscores the dynamic relationship between cultural production and scholarly analysis, positioning her work at the intersection of feminist studies, cultural theory, fashion studies, and media studies.

Instagram: @alejandrinis
Bluesky: @alejandrinis.bsky.social

Research

Women of Color and Black Feminist Theory; Queer and Trans of Color Critiques of Capitalism; Productive and Reproductive Labors; Queer and Latinx Fashion, Media, and Popular Cultures.