Martin F. Manalansan IV

Martin F. Manalansan IV is the Beverly & Richard Fink Professor in Liberal Arts and Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He has taught at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, University of the Philippines, New York University, New School University, Wesleyan University, and the City University of New York. As a cultural anthropologist, he is interested in the ethnographic study of the small, the fleeting, the contingent, and the "infra-ordinary." He conducts interdisciplinary research on queer theory, sexuality and gender, Asian Americans, Filipino global diaspora, affect and embodiment, food and culture, decolonial politics of social science theory, popular culture, urban modernity, and vernacular globalization. His work focuses on marginalized lives mired not only in the necropolitical but are simultaneously animated by the messy energies of desire and pleasure. Before going back to academia, Manalansan worked for 10 years in AIDS/HIV research, program evaluation and prevention education at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and the Asian Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS both in New York City. This experience has shaped his goal in combining academic pursuits with social justice activism.