Janeth Manriquez

Biography

Janeth Manríquez Ruiz is a Ph.D. candidate in Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame, where she works at the intersection of Hispanic and East Asian literature and film. Born and raised in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, she earned her B.A. in International Relations with a minor in Spanish from Tecnológico de Monterrey in 2022, where her undergraduate work centered on feminist theory, exploring topics such as the terrorization of female bodies, the figure of Antigone in Latin American motherhood, the neologism of sheng nu and its parallels in Latin American cultures, and representations of compulsory heterosexuality in contemporary Mexican fiction. Her capstone examined the relationship between transnational crime and the necropolitics of gender in 21st-century Latin America. She holds an M.A. in Latin American and Iberian Studies from the University of Notre Dame. 

Her dissertation, The Abyss is Habitable: Infrafeminism, Mourning, and the End of the World in Hispanic and East Asian Women's Narratives, examines catastrophe not as rupture or singular event but as a constitutive condition of existence, asking what forms of mourning and relation become possible when the end is already here. Her broader research interests include contemporary Hispanic and East Asian women's literature and film, feminist theory, and modern and contemporary thought. She has presented her work at LASA, the International Comparative Literature Association, and the University of Michigan, among other venues.

Beyond her research, Janeth is deeply committed to community engagement. She currently volunteers with Notre Dame's Refugee Resettlement Program, has served as Graduate Representative on the department's equity and inclusion committee, and has collaborated with civil associations focused on child welfare and raising awareness of violence against women. Janeth is also a devoted Mitski listener — a fitting soundtrack, perhaps, for a scholar of mourning and the end of the world.