PhD in Art History
Li Machado
- Email: liam.machado@temple.edu
Li Machado (they/he/she) is a PhD candidate specializing in Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art. With a research emphasis on memory and memorials, presence, and absence, Li's work builds on recent histories of queer art, queer worldmaking and youth culture, and transnational identity formation in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, particularly Los Angeles. Their dissertation, “Intricately Woven: Networks of Desire in Queer Chicanx L.A., 1985-2020,” focuses on depictions of queer sociability and desire in portraiture, drawing, and archival work between the AIDS crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Li is a 2024-25 Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellow in American Art, and the 2024 Predoctoral Fellow in Latinx Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). Between 2023 and 2024, they worked as a curatorial assistant at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College. Between 2020 and 2021, they were president of the Art History Graduate Organization (AHGO) at Temple, leading the graduate student cohort’s push for an overhauled undergraduate curriculum, anti-racist teaching, and improved teaching assistant training in the wake of the summer 2020 Black Lives Matters protests. They have also advocated for improved remote learning assessments and the use of open educational resources in the wake of the pandemic. Li is a former Temple University Future Faculty Fellow, a recipient of the inaugural Marcia Hall Research Award, and an alum of the Getty Emerging Professionals and Getty Marrow Undergraduate Internship programs.
Li previously earned a BA in Art History from University of La Verne (2016), studying Brazilian modernist painting and the Antropofagia movement in 1920s São Paulo. They subsequently earned an MA in the same field from University of Oregon (2019), where their thesis examined the visual culture, propaganda, and boycott of the 1978 FIFA World Cup in Argentina.
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Li Machado (elle/él/ella) es un estudiante doctoral del arte moderno y contemporáneo de latinoamérica y de comunidades latinx en los Estados Unidos. Actualmente, Li estudia el arte político y la formación de identidades transnacionales y LGBTQ+ en México, E.E.U.U., y el arte chicanx. Su tesis doctoral se enfoca en representaciones de jotería y relaciones cuir en retratos fotográficos y dibujados entre 1985 y 2020, durante las eras de la crisis de SIDA y la pandemia de COVID-19.
Li recibió una beca predoctoral en el arte americano para el año académico 2024-25, a través del Henry Luce Foundation y el American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Anteriormente, elle también recibió una beca predoctoral en el arte latinx por parte del Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) en Washington, D.C. Entre 2023 y 2024, trabajó como un asistente curatorial para el Benton Museum of Art, vinculado a Pomona College. Entre 2020 y 2021, Li era presidentx del Art History Graduate Organization (AHGO) de Temple University. Ahí lideró discusiones para instituir normas de antirracismo y reformar el currículum del departamento de la historia del arte. También propuso la adopción de recursos educativos abiertos durante la transición al aprendizaje remoto en 2020.
Li llegó a Temple University proveniente de University of Oregon en 2019, donde consiguió un MA en la historia del arte por su tesis sobre la propaganda y la cultura visual de la Copa Mundial de la FIFA 1978 en Argentina. Anteriormente, elle graduó de University of La Verne con un un BA en la historia del arte, estudiando la poesía y pintura de la vanguardia paulista en Brasil en los años 20. Li es hijx de inmigrantes argentinos y trinitenses, y es hincha del club de fútbol Boca Juniors.
Advisor: Mariola V. Alvarez, PhD