Join us as we do a feature of NYU Press books on Latinx Studies; including Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas and Mérida M. Rúa, authors of Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies; Mary Beltran, author of the forthcoming Latino TV: A History; and Jesica S. Fernández, author of Growing Up Latinx: Coming of Age in a Time of Contested Citizenship.
Speakers
Mérida M. Rúa holds a Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan and is a faculty member in the Latina and Latino Studies Program at Northwestern University. Her research and teaching focus on the history and politics of communities of color in U.S. cities. Rúa is the author of A Grounded Identidad: Making New Lives in Chicago’s Puerto Rican Neighborhoods (2012) and editor of Latino Urban Ethnography and the Work of Elena Padilla (2010). She is also co-editor of Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies: A Reader (2021) with Ana Y. Ramos Zayas and a forthcoming (December 2021) special issue of Latino Studies — “The Art of Latina and Latino Elderhood” — with Katynka Z. Martínez. Her current book project, “Migrations to Elderhood,” chronicles the complex and multifaceted lives of older adult Puerto Ricans. Based on four years of qualitative research, including 60 interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, plus analyses of literary, visual, and performance cultures, it offers interdisciplinary insight into how this population navigates, talks about, and makes meaning of their experiences and socio-spatial environments as they grow old.
Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas received her BA in Economics and Latin American Studies from Yale College, and her MA/PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. She is the author of National Performances: Class, Race, and Space in Puerto Rican Chicago (The University of Chicago Press, 2003; ASA Latino Studies Book Award, 2006) and Street Therapists: Affect, Race, and Neoliberal Personhood in Latino Newark (The University of Chicago Press, 2012; Frank Bonilla Book Award 2010-12). Her most recent book, Parenting Empires: Whiteness, Class, and the Moral Economy of Privilege in Latin America (Duke University Press, 2020), examines the parenting practices of Brazilian and Puerto Rican upper-classes, as these alter urban landscapes; provide moral justifications for segregation, surveillance, and foreign interventions; and recast idioms of crisis, corruption, and austerity according to the dictums of US empire.
Jesica Siham Fernández is an Assistant Professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at Santa Clara University (CA, USA). Trained in social-community psychology, and Latin American & Latinx Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz, her scholarship is grounded in a decolonial feminist praxis and Latinx critical theory. Jesica engages ethnographic and testimonio methodologies, as well as critical PAR paradigms to support Latinx and communities of color in their efforts to actualize liberation, and the creation of thriving living environments. Jesica's research, teaching and organizing work strives toward community thriving, sociopolitical wellbeing, and transformative justice. Jesica is the author of the forthcoming book "Growing Up Latinx: Coming of Age in a Time of Contested Citizenship" (New York University Press), which explores the lives of Latinx youth as they grapple with their social and political identities from an early age as they face an increasingly hostile United States political climate.
Mary Beltrán is an associate professor of Radio-Television-Film and affiliate of Mexican American & Latina/o Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom, co-editor of Mixed Race Hollywood, and author of the forthcoming Latino TV: A History.
Event Recap
On December 13th, the Latinx Project hosted a conversation moderated by Arlene Davila and Eric Zinner (Associate Director and Editor-in-Chief, NYU Press) regarding the new and exciting research being released at NYU Press in Latinx Studies. The event sought to highlight the new and cutting edge work being produced and published by scholars who are defining and expanding the field. Present were Mary Beltrán (Author of the forthcoming “Latino TV: A History”), Jesica S. Fernández (Author of “Growing Up Latinx: Coming of Age in a Time of Contested Citizenship”), Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, and Mérida M. Rúa (Authors of “Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies”). Our contributors spoke on a diverse array of topics spanning the legacies of latinx representation both in television media and within writer’s rooms, the different ways latinx youth are barred from yet still manage to find ways to engage in cultural citizenship, as well as the need for Latinx scholars of different eras to engage in intergenerational conversations that have the potential to expand and fortify the field. Additionally our panel discussed the need for more Latinx inclusion and representation in the publication industry, the new digital and alternative modes of sharing and disseminating data and research, as well as tips for new Latinx scholars to pursue publication.