Research

My 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. I am particularly interested in media representation and the media industries as a reflection of social history and social power.

My forthcoming book is titled Latino Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Evolution and Racial Politics of Latina/o Stardom. Latino Stars in U.S. Eyes 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. Latino Stars in U.S. Eyes will be published by University of Illinois Press; publication is planned for 2009. With Camilla Fojas I also co-edited Mixed Race Hollywood (NYU Press, August 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

Latino Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Evolution and Racial Politics of Latina/o Stardom.  University of Illinois Press, (forthcoming, 2009).

Mixed Race Hollywood. Co-editor with Camilla Fojas. New York University Press, August 2008.

“When Dolores Del Rio Became Latina: Latina/o Stardom in Hollywood’s Transition to Sound.” Latino/a Communication Studies Today, ed. Angharad Valdivia. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.

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

“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 Video 19.1 (January 2002): 71-86.

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

"Sanjaya and the Mulatto Millennium." FlowTV Vol. 5, Issue 12 (May 2007).

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

“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.