Latinos and Media Project

BIO

Dr. Clara E. Rodríguez is a Professor of Sociology at Fordham University's College at Lincoln Center.  She is the author of nine books including the following two that are specifically concerned with the media and Latinos: Heroes, Lovers and Others (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2004) and Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in U.S. Media. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997. She has written over 50 articles on Latinos in the United States and is currently at work on an update of the classic Coser, Kadushin and Powell text, Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing, which will be published by Stanford University Press.  She has also been a consultant to a number of television shows and documentaries, most recently, “Dora, the Explorer” and “Sesame Street.”

She is the recipient of numerous research and teaching awards, most recently, her university’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in the Social Sciences in 2003 and the American Sociological Association’s 2001 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in the Field of Latina/o Studies. Formerly a Dean at Fordham University, she has also been a Visiting Professor at Columbia University, MIT, and Yale University, a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, a Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. She was recently designated “Distinguished Lecturer” by the Organization of American Historians.

Latino-Related Research and Publications

Research

Currently working on research, which involves Latinos on primetime TV and continuing research on early film viewing in Latin America.

Selected Publications

C. E. Rodriguez, "?Film Viewing in Latino Communities, 1896-1934,? in From Bananas to Buttocks: The Latina Body in Popular Film and Culture edited by Myra Mendible, University of Texas Press, 2007

Greco, A., C. Rodriguez, and Robert Wharton (2007) The Culture and Commerce of Publishing in the 21st Century . Stanford University Press. Parts of this book speak to the issues of (a) Spanish language book publishing (b) the presence of Latinos and other minorities in the book publishing industry and (c) Latinos as consumers of books.