Ernesto Javier Martínez is Associate Professor and Department Head of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies (IRES) at the University of Oregon.
His work—both academic and artistic—explores how racially and sexually marginalized communities in the United States use literature, art, and culture to produce knowledge about their lives despite being subjected to forms of violence that distort their reality and challenge their credibility as knowers. He is the author of On Making Sense: Queer Race Narratives of Intelligibility (Stanford UP, 2012), as well as the co-editor of Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader (Duke UP, 2011) and The Truly Diverse Faculty: New Dialogues in American Higher Education (Palgrave, 2014). In children's media, he is best known for co-writing, with Jill Cozza-Turner, the animated kids movie Daniel Visits a New Neighborhood: The Movie (PBS Kids 2022), writing and producing the short film La Serenata, directed by Adelina Anthony (HBO Max, 2020-22), and writing the award-winning children’s book Cuando Amamos Cantamos/ When We Love Someone, We Sing to Them, illustrated by Maya Christina González (Reflection Press, 2018).
He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lambda Literary Award, two International Latino Book Award Gold Medals, the Imagen Award (commonly known as the "Latin Golden Globes"), and the HBO Latinx Short Film Competition Award. At the UO, he has received the Provost's Faculty Excellence Award, the UO Foundation's Trustee Excellence Award, and the CAS Collegiate Faculty Award (the highest honor the College of Arts and Sciences awards to active tenure track faculty members). He is also the recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the National Association for Latino Independent Producers (NALIP).
