Peña is Professor of Performing Arts, American Culture Studies, and Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. She is also a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity. Her research centers around the study of borders, the study of religion, and the study of hemispheric Latinx performance.
Trained between Performance Studies and Cultural Anthropology, Peña’s work looks carefully at the production and transmission of knowledge from a range of vantage points—from the printed word to embodied practice to the built environment. She is the author of two acclaimed books—Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe (University of California Press, 2011) and ¡Viva George! Celebrating Washington’s Birthday at the U.S.-Mexico Border (University of Texas Press, 2020). She also edited Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s Ethno-techno: Writings on performance, activism, and pedagogy (Routledge, 2005) and contributed to Gómez-Peña Unplugged: Texts on Live Art, Social Practice and Imaginary Activism (2008-2020) (Routledge, 2020).
In addition to her books, Peña has published scholarship in e-misférica, American Quarterly, American Literary History, The Drama Review, Material Religion, and The Journal of Borderlands Studies. Her work has been recognized widely, including by the British Academy, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Ford Foundation.
Born and raised in Laredo, Texas, Peña earned her B.A. from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas before completing her Ph.D. at Northwestern University. She taught at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Yale University, and George Washington University before joining the WashU faculty in 2023.
