Faculty Profile for Dr. Louie Dean Valencia

Biography Section

Biography and Education

Research Background
Dr. Louie Dean Valencia studies how young people create social change through technology, art, counterculture, activism, social media, celebrity, and in public spaces. His interests range from queer icons of the Renaissance to antiauthoritarian punks to far-right activists online. He is the NEH Distinguished Professor in the Humanities for 2024-2027, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

His books include Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History (2020), which studies how the far-right uses and abuses history 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.

His work has been covered by NPR, BBC, CNN, 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, Teen Vogue, Seventeen, L’essentiel, Cosmopolitan, Paper, Grazia, Hunger, Nylon, Complex, amongst hundreds of other local and international media outlets.

Teaching Interests

Digital history; European History and culture; Public history

My teaching philosophy
A believer in minimizing classroom hierarchies, my students participate in discussions, analyze historical sources, and work on projects based on their research interests and goals. I ground my teaching in experiential and holistic learning.

Research Interests

Early and Late Modern Europe
Technology/Digital Information
Network analysis
Democracy and the Public Sphere
Fascism/Far-Right Nationalism
Antiauthoritarianism
Youth Culture
Celebrity/Popular culture
Countercultures/Subcultures
Gender, Sexuality, and Queer Studies
Urban Studies
HIV/AIDS

Research Opportunities
He is currently accepting undergraduate and graduate students interested in assisting with my current research projects as part of an independent study for course credit, an Honors capstone project, or on a volunteer basis.