Associate Professor of Latina/o/x Studies, Department of American Culture
About
Regina Marie Mills is Associate Professor of Latina/o/x Studies in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan. She was previously Associate Professor of Latinx and U.S. Multi-Ethnic Literature in the Department of English and holder of the Elton Lewis Faculty Fellowship in Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University.
Dr. Mills's research and interest in digital studies stems from her interest in play (especially video games) and Latinx studies. Her first book, Invisibility and Influence: A Literary History of AfroLatinidades (University of Texas Press, 2024) and won Honorable Mention for the 2026 Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Latinx Studies Section Book Award. While focused on life writing, the book also examines playful practices like double dutch and the dozens, topics she wanted to pursue further.
As guest co-editor of “Post-Soul Afro-Latinidades,” a special issue of The Black Scholar (2022), she published the first peer-reviewed piece on video game representations of Miles Morales, Spider-Man. Her work in video games has been published in journals and collections such as The Lion & the Unicorn, The Routledge Companion to Latinx Life Writing, Atravesados: Essays on Queer Latinx Young Adult Literature, and Latinx Literature and Critical Futurities, 1992-2020. She is co-editing the volume Coded Latinx on Latinx game studies with Carlos Kelly Gonzalez. Her second book project, tentatively titled Gaming Latinidad, explores Latinx play within video games, trading card games, and other playful communities.
She is a first-generation college student, the daughter of a Guatemalan immigrant, and the eldest of seven children. She is also an avid video game player. Her favorite games include Chrono Trigger, The Tales JRPG series (esp. Tales of the Abyss), Gris, and the Pokémon series. She is currently playing Hell Clock, Pokémon Legends Z-A, and Hades II.
