Faculty Profile for Dr. Louie Dean Valencia

Biography Section

Biography and Education

Dr. Louie Dean Valencia is an Associate Professor of Digital History at Texas State. He holds a Ph.D. in Early and Late Modern European History from Fordham University and is interested in countercultures and how they affect society at large, particularly through the cultural production of avant-garde, popular, queer, and youth cultures. At Texas State, Dr. Valencia is Event Coordinator of the Center for Public History at Texas State University and Faculty-In-Residence for the Honors College. He has taught at Harvard University and been an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Museum of the City of New York.

His first book, Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture in Francoist Spain: Clashing with Fascism (Bloomsbury Academic 2018), was a finalist for Council for European Studies 2018-2020 book award. That book tells the story of the ‘Movida Madrileña’, a countercultural new wave scene that subverted Spain’s fascist culture and contributed to the country’s successful democratic transition—immortalized in the films of director Pedro Almodóvar.

His second book, an edited volume, Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History: Alt/Histories (Routledge 2020), elucidates how the far right uses and abuses history to legitimate fascist ideologies. As editor of the book, he brought together a variety of scholars interested in history, neuroscience, law, sociology, activism, and beyond. In the book, he proposes a theoretical framework to understand “Alt-History”—or the ways in which white nationalists misconstrue the past so that to legitimate fascist ideologies. He focuses on “Generation Identity” and a far-right publisher known for radicalizing young people into far-right ideologies.

Dr. Valencia’s current research focuses on HIV/AIDS in Europe through the lenses of urban studies, healthcare policy, community organizing, technological innovation and information distribution, and scientific research. He is also completing a book on masculinity, online fandoms, and British musician Harry Styles. He will be the General Editor of a forthcoming six-volume series, A Cultural History of Countercultures (Bloomsbury Academic), spanning from antiquity to the digital age.

He has co-edited a special feature for the Council for European Studies at Columbia University’s online journal, EuropeNow, titled “Imagining, Thinking, and Teaching Europe” (2020). His articles have been published in the journals Fascism, European Comic Art, Contemporary European History, amongst others, and in numerous edited volumes. He is a member of the Scientific and Editorial Committee for the Revista Internacional de Estudios sobre Terrorismo and the Archivo de la Frontera.

Dr. Valencia has held fellowships from the United States Library of Congress and the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory. He has received grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, the Center for European Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and Santander Universities. At the Museum of the City of New York, he has curated exhibitions on swing dance in Harlem and the photography of Carl Van Vechten, and his work is featured in the permanent exhibition, New York at Its Core. He has served as a director for the Aspects of Leadership Summer Institute at Princeton University, a fully-funded seven-week program that invites high-achieving, rising high school seniors from across the United States from lower-socioeconomic backgrounds applying to selective universities. He has also worked as a digital strategy analyst on major projects for GOOP by Gwyneth Paltrow, Pepsi, Ann Taylor/LOFT, Patrón Tequila, amongst others.

Dr. Valencia’s work is known internationally, and has been covered by NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered, BBC, CNN, MSNBC, The Guardian, El Periódico, The New York Times, The Times, The Independent, the Evening Standard, the Telegraph, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Elle, Jezebel, GQ, Vanity Fair, NME, Billboard, Rolling Stone, American Song Writer, Dazed, Glamour, Teen Vogue, L’essentiel, Cosmopolitan, Paper, Grazia, Nylon, Complex, VICE, Digg, Bustle, Crave, Gay Times, Gay.IT, amongst hundreds of other local and international media outlets.

In addition to having his course, Harry Styles and the Cult of Celebrity, ranked in Seventeen’s list of “Coolest Classes You Won’t Believe Actually Exist,” Dr. Valencia has won numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship at the college and university level.

Dr. Valencia can usually be found reading, browsing a comic book shop, writing, or chatting at a café, curating his record collection, digging through archives, or planning his next trip. He is most likely listening to Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, Carly Rae Jepsen, Shawn Mendes, Lana del Rey, Guitarricadelafuente, Patti Smith, MGMT, Caravan Palace, Ratatat, or Phoenix.

Teaching Interests

Digital history;
Public history;
Methods/Pedagogy

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