John Kennedy Godoy is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. He completed his PhD and MA at Cornell University with graduate concentrations in Latina/o Studies and Latin American Studies and his research focuses on Latinx and Indigenous literature, film, and migration.

John is the translator of Letters from Inside a U.S. Detention Center: Carla's Story (Routledge, 2023) and the director of an award-winning documentary on the Mexico–Guatemala border. In recognition of his commitment to publicly engaged scholarship, he was inducted into the Bouchet Graduate Honor Society at Yale University for work with underserved students and communities.

His writing appears or is forthcoming in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Diacritics, Latin American Cultural Studies, Latin American Literary Review, Modern Fiction Studies, and other venues. He is currently working on two book projects—the first explores unaccompanied migration narratives in Latinx literature with a focus on figural politics and legalisms. The second analyzes contemporary Indigenous cinema, media, and literature in Abya Yala and Turtle Island, addressing internal interpretative methods and sovereignties. 

John is from Pennsylvania. He grew up visiting family in Ixim Ulew (Guatemala) and has lived or resided on Lenape, Aniyvwiya (Cherokee), Gayogohó:nǫˀ (Cayuga), Garínagu, Quechua, Lenca, Hinóno'éí (Arapaho), Tsistsistas (Cheyenne), Núuchiu (Ute), Nahuat, and Maya lands.