Latinos and Media Project

BIO

Degrees

Ph.D, Radio-Television-Film. University of Texas at Austin, 2002
M.S., Social Work. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1993

Major Honors/Awards

Faculty Research Award, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Summer 2007
Faculty Diversity Research Award, Institute on Race and Ethnicity, University of Wisconsin Systems,
Fall 2006
Visiting Scholar, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, Summer 2005
Faculty Research Award, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Summer 2005
University Continuing Fellow, The University of Texas at Austin . 2001-2002
David Bruton Fellow, The University of Texas at Austin . 2000-2001

Latino Related Research and Publications

Beltrán's research and teaching interests include Latino/a, mixed-race, and other non-white participation and representation in U.S. film and television; stardom and the construction of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation; Hollywood film and U.S. television history and theory; and media activism and media justice movements. She is particularly interested in media representation and the media industries as a reflection of social history and social power.

She is currently working on a book, Hollywood Latinidad: Latino/a Stardom and U.S. Transformations. Hollywood Latinidad explores the evolution of mediated images of Latino/as in relation to the evolving status of Mexican Americans and other Latinos, through focus on how particular stars have been constructed and promoted by Hollywood film studios, television networks, and producers since the silent film era, and how audiences and critics responded to the public images of these performers. Hollywood Latinidad will be published by University of Illinois Press in 2008 or early 2009. With Camilla Fojas, she is co-editing Mixed Race Hollywood: Multiraciality in Film and Media Culture (NYU Press, 2008), an anthology of film and television studies scholarship on mixed-race and bicultural representation and stars in film, television, star promotion, and new media texts.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Hollywood Latinidad: Latino/a Stardom and U.S. Transformations, 1920s+. Manuscript in progress, under advanced contract with University of Illinois Press.

Mixed-Race Hollywood: Multiraciality in Film and Media Culture. Co-editor with Camilla Fojas. New York University Press, forthcoming in 2008.

“Mixed Race in Latinowood: Latino Stardom and Ethnic Ambiguity in the Era of Dark Angels.” In Mixed Race Hollywood: Multiraciality in Film and Media Culture, eds. Mary Beltrán and Camilla Fojas. New York: NYU Press, 2008.

“Latin Lovers and American Accents: Latino/as and the Transition to Sound Film.” Latino/a Communication Studies Today, ed. Angharad Valdivia. New York: Peter Lang, 2007.

“Rooting for Betty.” FlowTV Vol. 5, Issue 4.

“The New Hollywood Racelessness:  Only the Fast, Furious (and Multi-Racial) Will Survive.”   Cinema Journal 44:2, Winter 2005: 50-67.

“Dolores Del Rio, the First ‘Latino Invasion,’ and Hollywood’s Transition to Sound.”  Aztlán: The Journal of Chicano Studies 30:1, Winter 2005: 55-86.

“The Hollywood Latina Body as Site of Social Struggle: Media Constructions of Stardom and Jennifer Lopez’s ‘Cross-over Butt.’” The Quarterly Review of Film and Video19.1 (January 2002): 71-86.

“Más Macha:  The New Latina Action Hero.”  In Action and Adventure Cinema, ed. Yvonne Tasker. London: Routledge: 2004. 186-200.

“Commemoration as Crossover: ‘Remembering’ Selena.”  In Afterlife as Afterimage: Popular Music and Posthumous Fame, eds. Steve Jones and Joli Jensen.  Peter Lang Publishing, 2005. 81-96.

“Pressurizing the Media Industry." First author, with Jane Park, Henry Puente, Sharon Ross, and John Downing. In Representing ‘Race’: Racisms, Ethnicity, and the Media, John D.H. Downing and Charles Husband.  London: Sage Publications: 2005. 160-193.