Assistant Professor of English
Takeo Rivera (he/him), assistant professor in English, is a specialist in performance studies, Asian American studies, ethnic studies, queer theory, and videogame studies in U.S. cultural production. His first book, Model Minority Masochism: Performing the Cultural Politics of Asian American Masculinity (Oxford University Press, 2022) explores the masochistic attachment to model minority ideology in Asian American theater, literature, graphic novels, historical archives, and video games. Model Minority Masochism explores the relationship between power and pleasure within the traumas of racialization, examining affective attachments to nonhuman, machine-like stereotypical forms. It won the 2024 Honorable Mention for the book prize in Media, Performance, and Visual Studies from the Association for Asian American Studies.
His work has also been published in or forthcoming from such journals and anthologies as Performance Research, Social Text, ASAP/Journal, Amerasia, Modern Drama, TDR, the Journal for Asian American Studies, post-45 Contemporaries, Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us, the Routledge Companion to Asian American Media, and the Handbook of Cultural Politics and Education. Dr. Rivera is also a playwright whose plays have been staged in New York City, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. His creative work explores race, masculinity, and sexuality at length. His play Goliath has been recognized by the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, the New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest, and the Planet Connections Theater Festivity. He has also worked with Poetic Theater Productions in New York City, CompanyONE Theater in Boston, and PlayGround San Francisco.
Dr. Rivera teaches courses in contemporary drama, performance studies, Asian American literature, queer theory, new media, racial capitalism, and critical ethnic studies. He is also a member of the core faculty of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Program, a member of the BU Faculty Gender & Sexuality Studies Group, affiliate of the African American & Black Diaspora Studies Program and the American Studies Program, and currently serves as the faculty mentor of the Asian Student Union and the Untangle zine. Dr. Rivera was also a 2019-2020 faculty fellow at the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University, and a recipient of the Outstanding Mentor Award for UROP at BU.
A publicly engaged scholar, Rivera has been interviewed for Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, Financial Times, Wired, NBC, and Mic, among others, on a range of subjects regarding Asian American culture and politics. Prior to attaining his PhD, Rivera worked as a rape crisis advocate, counselor, and educator in San Jose, CA.