Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This presentation discusses images of the Latina/o gothic and the role of murders, monsters, and madness in Latina/o fiction. How have Latina/o authors used such images and themes to combat fixed representations of Latina/o identity as monstrously "Other"? How have writers such as Cristina Garcia and Jewelle Gomez and visual artists such as Miguel Arteta and Alma Lopez used images of the gothic to confront sexism, racism, and homophobia? How does their use of gothic themes and tropes read wtih other authors of the American gothic? How does their use of the gothic signal new directions in Latina/o cultural production? How do readings and theorizations of the Latina/o gothic travel into the otherworlds of a transnational context?

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: Using autobiographical performance, I examine the application process for permanent residency in the United States post-911 as a cultural performance. Specifically, I draw upon my experience as a third generation Mexican American married to an Egyptian. I use our narratives of performing and embodying “authentic,” desired, and ideal citizenship as a way to critically examine strategies of making do and uses of hidden and public transcripts as means for resistance and possibility. I also make connection between our respective larger cultural histories of (im)migration as a way to began to theorize the affective politics and performances of Otherness and create more complex understandings of Latinidad or mestizaje. I negotiate my role as Chicana Other/Academic complete with own family history of immigration, performing ideal citizenship post-911, a time in which immigration by both Latina/os and Arabs has come under attack once again.

Dr. Calafell is an assistant professor at the University of Denver School of Communication Studies. Some of her recent essays have appeared in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Text and Performance Quarterly, and the Communication Review.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Drawing upon scholarship on Mexican Americans and World War II and the Viet Nam War (e.g., by Mario T. García, George Mariscal, and Lorena Oropeza), “Enduring Freedom: The Latina/o Soldier and the ‘War on Terror’” explores the ways Latinas and Latinos have used insurgent nationalisms, especially cultural nationalism, to challenge and/or alter statist nationalism and imperialism in a world that is supposedly postnationalist. Additionally, I seek to illuminate the ways in which the state has appropriated the discourses, ideals, and goals of insurgent nationalisms and feminism in the service of war and imperialism in this epoch of globalization, especially during the so-called War on Terror. The questions I grapple with include: How does the minority subject, an individual and/or knowledge formation usually linked to nation and nationalism, participate in national and global processes related to war and U.S. imperialism? How have race, ethnicity, and gender been mobilized to bolster and/or critique nation and nationalism? And how have minority subjects—namely, Latinas and Latinos—used war to reify, link, and/or challenge nation and nationalism?

In addressing these queries, I study the cases of José Padilla, the alleged terror suspect, and José Antonio Gutiérrez and Lori Piestewa, the first male and female U.S. casualties in “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” A Guatemalan immigrant and U.S. Marine, Gutiérrez was awarded U.S. citizenship posthumously. Piestewa, a Hopi-Chicana, was killed in the same convoy in which Jessica Lynch was traveling near Nasiriyah, Iraq, in March 2003. Upon her death, Squaw Peak, a mountain near her hometown of Tuba City, Arizona, was renamed in her honor and, on the third anniversary of 9/11, her parents’ house, a rented 1,200-square-foot mobile home on the Hopi reservation, was featured on ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The cases of Piestewa, Gutiérrez, and Padilla have inspired me to re-examine home as an ideological construct, especially as related to homeland, home front, and citizenship. What’s more, all three cases underscore Latinas’ and Latinos’ vexed relationship to U.S. citizenship: Padilla’s incarceration raises a number of thorny questions concerning homeland security and the rights of citizens, while Gutiérrez’s and Piestewa’s lives and deaths complicate the concept of the “citizen-soldier.”

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: On September 2006 adaptations of three popular Latin American telenovelas began airing on broadcast television: “Fashion House” and “Desire” on My Network TV and “Ugly Betty” on ABC. Telenovelas, melodramatic serials that revolve around heterosexual romances, family intrigues, betrayal and deception, are a staple of Spanish-language television networks and make up the bulk of their prime-time line-up, yet this genre has largely been confined to daytime hours on American networks—until now. The debuts of “Fashion House,” “Desire” and “Ugly Betty” signals the willingness of American corporate television to offer a cultural format linked to Latina/o cultures to target general audiences. Interestingly, while ABC and My Network TV were introducing audiences to their version of telenovelas MTV Networks was attempting a different kind of cross-cultural pollination by launching MTV Tr3s, a channel aimed at young Latina/os on September 25, 2006. Featuring a mixture of reggaeton, rock en español and Top 40 music as well as Latina/o-inflected versions of popular MTV programs like “My Super Sweet Sixteen,” “TRL Live,” and “Pimp My Ride” this latest addition to the MTV family deliberately deploys specific genres and symbols to interpellate Latina/os.

This paper focuses on the changes mainstream television has made in order to “Americanize” Latin American telenovelas and contrasts them with MTV’s efforts to “ethnicize” general-audience youth culture for its Latina/o-specific channel. Pinpointing those elements that have been marked as either “Latina/o” or “American” in these texts reveals the specific symbols and codes that define Latinidad for those working in U.S. mainstream media. In addition to clarifying current definitions and usages of fluid terms like “Latina/o” and “American,” this presentation will interrogate the relationship between these changes in commercial television content and the shifting nature of American communities and identities. As a visual medium, television defines, reinforces, and in some cases alters the various “imagined communities” of the United States by offering viewers narratives, characters and images specifically linked to a social group. Television programming presents viewers with specific vision of what the United States looks like, of what life is like for different groups of people living in this country. Given this, does the success of “Ugly Betty” foreshadow changes in our definition of what it means to be an “American” or is it merely a result of a growing Latina/o demographic? If the latter is the case, will “being Latina/o” retain the same meaning once members of that demographic cease to be a numerical minority within specific regions of the United States? I hope that addressing these questions will shed light on the nature of both national and ethnic identities as well as their role in American culture.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The last decade has witnessed the emergence of a significant body of research on issues concerning the growing population of multiracial-identified individuals. Yet, most of this work has focused on Black/White and Asian/White offspring. Comparatively fewer studies have examined issues of identity among the offspring of Chicana/o and/or Latina/o intermarriage. This roundtable will begin to fill a gap in the literature on multiracial identity as it relates to the experience and identity of individuals of partial Chicana/o Latina/o background. Research on this population is crucial, as offspring from intermarriages with one Latina/o partner constitute the majority of multiracial births in places such as California. Given that the offspring of Chicana/o Latina/o intermarriages, in California and the Southwest generally, will continue to grow, it is important to examine the ways in which these individuals identify themselves, the connections they have with their various communities of origin, and ultimately, whether or not and to what extent they may help transform understandings of race/ethnicity in the United States. Additionally, it is important to consider how these offspring (and multiracial individuals generally) are perceived by the larger society and how they might be incorporated into the United States racial order. This roundtable will address these issues, particularly with regard to the following: (1) the historical foundation of racial formation in California as this relates to multiracial individuals of partial African descent; (2) multiracial individuals of Chicana/o and Punjabi Asian Indian descent; (4) multiracial individuals of Chicana/o and Filipina/o descent; and (4) multiracial individuals of Chicana/o and European American descent.