Louie Dean Valencia
NEH Distinguished Professor in the Humanities
Center for Texas Public History, Director
Associate Professor of Digital History
Email: lvalencia@txst.edu
Socials: Instagram & Twitter
Curriculum Vitae
Research Interests:
Europe; youth; digital history; social change; popular culture and celebrity; social media, music, and visual culture; far-right culture; antifascism; public history and historical memory; urban spaces and the environment
Biography
Dr. Louie Dean Valencia is the NEH Distinguished Professor in the Humanities for 2024-2027, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Through his work in the Center for Texas Public History, he is an internationally recognized speaker and organizes programming related to digital technology, media, A.I., the environment, and contemporary social issues affecting young people.
Dr. Valencia studies how young people create social change through technology, art, counterculture, protest and activism, social media, celebrity, and in public spaces. His interests range from queer icons of the Renaissance to antiauthoritarian punks of the 1970s to the use and abuse of history in the contemporary world.
His books include Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History (2020), which studies how the far-right uses and abuses history and historical memory to legitimate fascism, authoritarianism, and identitarianism, and Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture in Francoist Spain (2018), a study of Spanish New Wave and how libertine youth culture challenged fascism. Currently, he is completing a book on identity, celebrity, and British musician Harry Styles. He also actively researches the history of HIV/AIDS in Europe. He is a member of the editorial boards of Popular Culture Review, Modern History of Politics and Violence, and Revista Internacional de Estudios sobre Terrorismo. He is editor for a forthcoming series on counterculture.
Dr. Valencia’s work has been covered by NPR, BBC, CNN, Teen Vogue, The Guardian, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Today Show, Us Weekly, Glamour, Good Morning America, Elle, GQ, Vanity Fair, NME, Billboard, Rolling Stone, Dazed, Seventeen, L’essentiel, Cosmopolitan, Paper, Grazia, Hunger, Nylon, Complex, amongst hundreds of other media outlets.
Background
Dr. Valencia dedicated his youth to making and selling websites, living out of hostels, pilgrimaging to Caravaggio paintings, and attending festivals. He then went on to earn a Ph.D. in Early and Late Modern European History from Fordham University in New York City. He has taught at Harvard University and received fellowships and grants from United States Library of Congress, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Spanish Ministry of Education, the American Council of Learned Societies, and Santander Bank, amongst others.
At the Museum of the City of New York, he curated exhibitions on swing dance in Harlem, the photography of Carl Van Vechten, and has had his work featured in the MCNY permanent exhibition, New York at Its Core. He has directed and developed curricula for the Aspects of Leadership Summer Institute at Princeton University, a fully-funded five-week pipeline program which placed 98% of its students in Ivy League and top-ranked universities. He has worked as a digital strategy analyst/consultant on major digital projects and campaigns for GOOP, PepsiCo., Ann Taylor/LOFT, and Patrón Tequila, amongst others.
Always in search of little adventures, he enjoys travelling, reading, black and white photography, browsing comic book shops, music and film festivals, coffee shops, and collecting records. When not listening to NPR, his favourite musicians include Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, Shawn Mendes, Jacob Collier, Mehro, Vampire Weekend, Surfaces, Arcade Fire, Lana del Rey, Guitarricadelafuente, Patti Smith, Nelly Furtado, the 1975, Caravan Palace, Ratatat, or Phoenix.
Select Publications
Longer Works
- Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture in Francoist Spain: Clashing with Fascism, Bloomsbury Academic, May 2018.
- Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History: Alt/Histories, edited volume, forthcoming from Routledge 2019.
- “Imagining, Thinking, and Teaching Europe” in EuropeNow (2020).
Select Journal Articles
- “Images and Ethics in Social Media Research.” Article in First Monday. Nicole Taylor, Louie Dean Valencia, Alejandro Allen. 2023.
- “Pluralism at the Twilight of Franco’s Spain: Antifascist Practice and Methodologies.” Article in Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies. Brill, 2020.
- “Imagining Europe, Citizenship, and Research in the Time of HIV/AIDS.” Article in EuropeNow, Council for European Studies at Columbia University, Summer 2020.
- “Locating Dictatorship in the Anthropocene: Historiographic Trends in the History of Science and Technology and the Study of European Authoritarianism.” State-of-the-field essay in Contemporary European History, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
- “Tintin in the Movida Madrileña: Gender and Sexuality in the Madrid Comic Book Zine Scene.” Article in European Comic Art, Berghahn Press, December 2018.
- “The Rise of the European Far-Right in the Internet Age.” Article in EuropeNow, Council for European Studies at Columbia University, February 2018.
Select Book Chapters
- “European Histories, Australian Anxieties: The Christchurch Killer in Context.” In The Politics of Replacement Demographic Fears, Conspiracy Theories, and Race Wars. Jack Wilson and Louie Dean Valencia, edited By Sarah Bracke, Luis Manuel Hernández Aguilar. London: Routledge, 2023.
- “MMMBop: From Analogue to Digital, Oklahoma to the Internet.” In One-Track Mind: Capitalism, Technology, and the Art of the Pop Song, edited by Asif Siddiqi. New York: Palgrave, 2022.
- “Empire and Civil Rights in Franco’s Spain.” In Rethinking Spain’s Atlantic Empire in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Scott Eastman, Vicente Sanz Rozalén, Stephen Jacobson. New York City: Berghahn, 2021.
- "From Western Civilization to Critical European Studies.” In European Studies: Past, Present and Future, edited by Erik Jones, New York: Agenda Publishing/Columbia University Press, 2020.
- “An Impulsive Teenager from the Future: Virtual Realities, Memory, and Imagining the Digital Future at the Turn of the Millennium.” In The Ages of the Flash: Essays on the Fastest Man Alive, edited by Joseph J. Darowski. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2019.
- “Reinventing a Carnivalesque Public Sphere: (Re)imagining and (Re)drawing Madrid in the Long 1970s.” Commissioned chapter in ‘I’m Just a Comic Book Boy:’The Punk Aesthetic in Comics, edited by Christopher Field, et al. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2019.
- “A League of Orphans and Single Parents: Making a Family in an Era of ‘Father Knows Best.’” In The Ages of the Justice League: Essays on America’s Greatest Superheroes in Changing Times, edited by Joseph J. Darowski. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, March 2017.
- “Truth, Justice and the American Way in Franco’s Spain.” In The Ages of Superman: Essays on the Man of Steel in Changing Times, edited by Joseph J. Darowski. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2012.
Select Public History Articles
- “How The El Paso Terrorist’s Manifesto Echoes Trump’s Rhetoric,” published in Rantt Media (Washington DC: Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right), August 2019.
- “The ups and downs and clashes of Western civilization,” published in Open Democracy. (London: Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right), July 2019.
- “Trump and the Global Resurgence of Fascism,” published in Rantt Media (Washington DC: Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right), August 2019.
- “Jim Carrey, Mussolini and the Politics of Comics,” published in Open Democracy. (London: Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right), April 2019.
- “Locating the Radical Right in an Age of Radical Climate Change,” published in CARR Insights. (London: Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right), March 2019.
- “The Ethics of Consuming Fascism,” published in Fair Observer. (London: Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, February 2019. United Nations Foundation Sponsored publication.
- “Spain First: The Return of the Falange,” published in CARR Insights. (London: Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right), December 2018.
- “Vox and the Return of the Radical Right in Spain,” published in CARR Insights. (London: Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right), December 2018.
- “In Remembrance of Kristallnacht,” published in EuropeNow (New York: Council for European Studies at Columbia University). November 2018.
- “Is He a Fascist? The Election of Jair Bolsonaro,” published in CARR Insights. (London: Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right), October 2018.
Courses Taught
Graduate
- Digital History (HIST 5375N)
- European Fascisms and Historical Memory (HIST 5318F)
- The Practice of Public History (HIST 5371)
- General Research Seminar (HIST 5398)
Undergraduate
- Europe since 1919 (HIST 3311)
- Harry Styles and the Cult of Celebrity: Identity, the Internet, and European Pop Culture (Honors 3399Q)
- History Lab: European Cinema and Film Festival (HIST 4374B)
- History of Early Modern Spain from 1492 to 1808 (HIST 3332)
- History of Modern Spain from 1808 to Present (HIST 3333)
- Humanities II: The Spanish Civil War (HON 2309H)
- International Studies Senior Capstone (IS 4380)
- Myths of Western Civilization (HON 3399F)
- Podcasting History: Marking Marginalized Voices Heard (4318Z)
- Queer Youth History (HIST 4318W)
- University Seminar (US 1100 [Honors])
- Western Civilization, 1715 to Date (HIST 2320)