It’s a monstrous loss as she moves onto another university, but students and fellow faculty are grateful for having had the opportunity to have Dr. Orquidea Morales in the SUNY Old Westbury classroom, sharing her unique courses related to the horror film industry. In her last semester, having been with OW for three years, Dr. Orquidea is teaching undergraduate classes including women’s studies and a class discussing gender and political horror. In the Fall she will be starting a new full-time teaching position at the University of Arizona.
Dr. Carol Quirke, Graduate Director of the Masters in Liberal Studies at OW, said Dr. Morales also developed a course which was offered to the Master’s students last semester titled, “Monsters Below the Border.”
“The course drew on her expertise in U.S. and Latin and Central American film and the horror genre. Her knowledge of filmgoing and film industries in multiple regions along with the cultural, social, and political realities animating these films is incomparable,” Dr. Quirke said.
Dr. Morales says she has always been interested in horror films, especially Latino ones, and started watching them as a child growing up in Texas. “I’m a fan of Mexican horror films because I grew up watching them,” she said.
Her fascination grew to her research and the ongoing question of “Why do we watch horror films?… There must be something there… So I’m interested in the psychology behind it as well.”
Dr. Morales, who was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, but lived in Rio Grande Valley, Texas said she came up with the class “Monsters Below the Border” because she wanted to teach a class that was horror specific but also addressed the history of Latin America in relation to the United States. “So it talks about the politics, but also talks about the myths and legends in horror films,” she said.
Dr. Morales earned her Ph.D. in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan in 2018 and was the 2019-2020 Cesar Chavez postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth College in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies. Her work on border violence, Latinx media, and Chicana feminism has been published in journals such as Río Bravo: A Journal of the Borderlands, Label me Latina/o, and the Utah Foreign Language Review as well as in the anthology, The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Media. She is currently working on her book manuscript entitled Border Horror: Death and Filmic Genres in South Texas and Northern Mexico.
In July, Dr. Morales will be leaving OW and Long Island for Arizona and her new adventure at the University of Arizona. She shares that while she enjoyed Long Island and her time at SOW, the move to Arizona will allow her to be closer to her family.
OW students and fellow faculty are united in congratulating Dr. Morales on her appointment and wish her well, but they acknowledge that it is a horrific loss for OW.
