Latinos and Media Project

Latino-Related Research and Publications

Research:
U.S. Latina/o and Latin American popular culture
Media Studies
Language politics
Transnational Studies
Community-based pedagogical approaches
Spanish for Heritage Speakers
Gender and Sexuality Studies

Selected Publications

Book and Edited Volumes:

Musical Imagi/Nations: The U.S. Colombians and the Latina(o) Music “Boom”
(New York:  New York University Press, forthcoming)

Musical Imagi/Nations represents the first book-length study of the largest South American immigrant community in the United States.  Here, I argue that Colombian popular music provides a common space for imagining and enacting Colombian identity outside of traditional national borders, and in ways not so overtly shaped by the scandal and shame of the drug-trafficking trade and violence with which contemporary Colombia is primarily associated. Via a cross-media analysis of popular media discourse and music, I assert that the Colombian political and social crisis of the late 1990s and early 2000s foregrounds Colombian popular music as a powerful arbitrator of memory and transnational identity in the US and Colombian contexts.  Under the auspices of the Miami-driven Latin(o) music “boom” of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Musical Imagi/Nation focuses on the work of Shakira, Andrea Echeverri of the group Aterciopelados, and Carlos Vives, all key Colombian artists whose music and transnational public personas illustrate the significant recent shifts in the communal meanings attached to Colombian identity both in the United States and Latin America. 

Co-editor (with Carlos Alamo-Pastrana), “Popular Culture and Youth
Latinidades: (Re)Constructing Community, from the Inside and Out,”(special issue of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, submitted July 2007)
Musical Migrations: Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity in Latin(o) America (with Cándida F. Jáquez and Frances R. Aparicio, editors; St. Martin’s Press, 2003)

Articles and Book Chapters:

“Whose Musical Imagi/Nation?: Contradictory Discourses of Belonging in ‘Nuestro Himno’ and ‘Reggaetón Latino,’” (submitted to Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, July 2007)

“At the Intersection of Empires: Don Quijote, U.S.A. and the Academic Location of Latino/a Studies,” (submitted to Comparative American Studies, June 2007)

“Survival Aesthetics: U.S. Latinas and the Negotiation of Popular Media,” Latina/o Communication Studies Today (Angharad N. Valdivia, ed.; Peter Lang, forthcoming)

“Mirando las Estrellas: La Joven Latina en Estados Unidos,” Revista Javeriana, Pontificia Universidad Javieriana, Bogotá, Colombia (January/February 2005)

“Miami: From ‘Instant City’ to Global Music Capital,” FORUM/Magazine of the Florida Humanities Council (Winter 2004)

“Shakira as the Idealized, Transnational Citizen: A Case Study of Colombianidad in Transition,” Latino Studies, 1.2, 210-232 (2003)

“Columbus Effects”: The Politics of Crossover and Chronology within the Latin(o) Music “Boom,” Discourse, 23.1, 242-267 (Winter 2001)

“Mucho loco for Ricky Martin, or: The Politics of Chronology, Crossover and Language within the Latin(o) Music ‘Boom,’” Popular Music and Society, 24.3, 55-71(Fall 2000)

“El ‘Beloved Spic’ que no habla English Only: oposición y resistencia en la poesía de Martín Espada, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, XXIV. 3, 517-529 (Spring 2000)

 Translations:

“Rock ‘n’ Roll in Peru’s Popular Quarters: Cultural Identity, Hybridity, and Transculturation,” by Luis A. Ramos-García, in Musical Migrations (St. Martin’s Press, 2003)

“La danza de las tijeras in the work of José María Arguedas: The Construction of Indigenous Quechua Identity,” by Juan Ulises Zevallos-Aguilar, in Musical Migrations (St. Martin’s Press, 2003).

“Rendering the Invisible, Visible and the Visible, Invisible: The Colonizing Function of Bailey K. Ashford’s Anti-anemia Campaigns,” by Fernando Feliú (Foucault in Latin America, Benigno L. Trigo, editor; Routledge, 2001)