Utopia chapter, this book would have never been finished. Leslie Reagan always provides a listening ear and a way to navigate myself out of professional and intellectual turmoil. Her feminist historical research deserves every award it has earned, and many more that are yet to come. I draw on the wisdom, scholarship, and friendship of Sarah Projansky. I miss her daily since she left us for the University of Utah. We co‐administered and ethically tried to defend a unit under fire. Her research on Girls Studies remains a model for me, especially in the Disney chapter. Mentors and fellow scholars Cliff Christians, Paula Treichler, and Norman Denzin provide me with models of academic excellence and integrity. I remain thankful to have worked in their company and belonged to what was once a functional unit full of integrity and a democratic vision. I have experienced working in a temporary academic utopia – I know it's possible.
I belong to circles of friendship and scholarship that nourish me. I met Sharon Mazzarella when we were both young and overwhelmed first‐year doctoral students, and we’ve sustained our friendship and intellectual collaborations all of these years. Our parallel academic paths have now intersected through Girls Studies. Since the early days in Feminist Media Studies, Radha Hegde and I have connected on issues of gender and the global. I am an interloper and admirer of her sophisticated postcolonial analysis. I hired Safiya Noble to our faculty when I was head of department and realized that, though she was tenure‐tracked, she'd be lured away within the year – and I was right. Her approach and commitment to social change through her scholarship inspire me. I am thankful that Lori Lopez had the brilliant idea to create the Race and Media conference so that senior and junior scholars could form a network of connections to grow a field. I've attended two of its four meetings and have found them to be temporary utopic spaces where a small group of scholars functions in community to listen to, support, and extend our work. I am so honored to just sit, listen, and learn from Ralina Joseph, Leilani Nishime, Roopali Mukherjee, and the many other brilliant scholars who regularly attend that conference. Fellow Latina feminists Maria Elena Cepeda, Jessica Retis, and Viviana Rojas compose a growing area of studies. In Spain, I count on the scholarly spirit and friendship of Paloma Diaz‐Soloage and Amparo Porta Navarro, whose suggestion to lengthen the four chapters rather than composing a fifth, which I did not want to write, paved the way for the conclusion of this book.
My transnational feminist GNO has been life‐saving – the founders, Manisha Desai, Faranak Miraftab, Zsuzsa Gille, Lisa Rosenthal, and Angelina Cotler, carved out a space of sociality and survival in what has become an increasingly hostile institution. Without Faranak Miraftab's constant insistence that I begin writing my book about my personal history, I would not have pushed myself to finish this one. Newer members of the GNO, Dede Ruggles, Terri Barnes, Helga Varden, Shelley Weinberg, and Elena Delgado, expand our group's areas of expertise as their presence contributes solidarity and mirth. Helga took a bunch of us hiking in the sub‐Artic circle of Norway. Dede takes me through Spain with the sharp eye of a globally renown Islamic art expert. We all want Terri Barnes to run for president. The transnational feminist GNO does not forget that we are the winners of the second wave of US feminism: we got our degrees, were hired at Research 1 universities, were promoted, and if we haven’t been fulled yet, we certainly will be. We will continue to pay it forward. We will not buckle down. The academy needs us, is lucky to have us, and we will keep at it.
Working at the Institute of Communications Research has meant that I have had the privilege of working with world‐class students, who easily surpass me once they graduate. I read their dissertations and humbly return to my less sophisticated work in progress, ready to reference their work and sharpen my analysis. Within the period I wrote this book, I have learned from all of my former advisees: Carrie Rentschler, Boatema Boateng, Kelly Gates, Lori Reed, Diem‐my Bui, Jillian Baez, Dennis Redmond, Christina Ceisel, Rich Potter, Mei Bai, Michelle Rivera, Alicia Kozma, Arnau Roig Mora, Koeli Goel, Rico Chenyek, Stephanie Brown, and Meghan Grosse. My former RA Susan Harewood, on whose committee I participated, remains one of my heroes. It is taking me years to get over her departure (I am still working on it). My current advisees, Diana Leon‐Boys, Morten Stinus Kristensen, elizaBeth Simpson, and Stephen Hocker, collectively promise to extend the boundaries of our interdisciplinary field. #BESTJOBEVER!!!
I am a family person with an extensive family network. Mom, sisters, brothers, in‐laws, nephews and nieces, cousins, and grandchildren. I have been blessed by three children, two daughters and a son, who have grounded me, made me a better person, and revealed my faults and shortcomings. My daughters Ailín del Carmen and Rhiannon are sharp, beautiful, and brilliant beings. Any style or common sense I have acquired, I owe to them. Lucas = happiness, pure and simple. I am still waiting for Tobin to come home. Cameron remains my rock, my sage, my funny partner, my solid supporter, and my irrepressible and unstoppable traveling companion – through the world and through life. I live surrounded by love, and I wish this for everyone.
Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto.
1 Continuities and Ruptures: The Gender of Latinidad
…the gendered subject of globalization, far from being self‐evident or transparent as often assumed, has to be situated within shifting formations of power.
(Hegde 2011, p. 1)
When I started, I was labeled “exotic.” That was it. It was like you had to be mysterious and sexual. Back in the day if you were Latina it was always a stereotype. They couldn't write you as a normal person in the world. [Director] Robert Rodriguez was kinda the first person who made Latinos commercial in his movies, like in the Spy Kids franchise. And then Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek [helped pave the way]. It was tough in the beginning.
(Jessica Alba, quoted by Brown 2018, p. 93)
In this millennial rewriting of Latina/o media history, Jessica Alba, a 37‐year‐old Latina mogul, takes us back to Robert Rodriguez's success story, begun in 1991, and Jennifer Lopez's Fly Girl days in 1992 – or perhaps to her major starring role in Selena, in 1997. Salma Hayek also crossed over to Hollywood from Mexico in 1991 but did not achieve a major role until she landed a part in Robert Rodriguez's Desperado (1995). Alba nails a historically significant period of Latina/o popular culture ascendance in which Latina/os functioned in particular roles but managed to rupture stereotypes and achieve lasting inclusion in the entertainment industry. All of those mentioned by Alba remain in the spotlight today: Robert Rodriguez, Jennifer Lopez, and Salma Hayek have not disappeared. Indeed, their careers are solid, their legacy secure. Jessica Alba herself continues to have success as a cover girl and neoliberal entrepreneur, creator and owner of the billion‐dollar Honest Company, selling organic and environmentally sustainable baby and beauty products. All of these prominent popular culture Latina/os have a broad range of provenances and function in relation to one another and to other ethnicities within a national and global terrain of mainstream media. None of them are pure, nor do they resemble one another. Yet, they represent mainstream Latinidad. Their varied careers, geographical and professional roots, and visibility speak to the gender of Latinidad in contemporary mainstream media.
One undeniably enduring component of any politics of inclusion continues to be mainstream media – whether legacy, digital, or thoroughly converged – as this serves to circulate narratives with embedded ideologies to a wide swath of the population. So‐called “minority” populations deserve presence, respect, and dignity in the mainstream because they/we are part of the mainstream, and expectations that apply to mainstream presence go to the core of citizenship issues (Amaya 2013; Casillas 2014). This book focuses on Latinidad as a broad multiplicitous and diverse category of ethnicity that is pan‐national, multi‐ethnic, intersectional, and transnational. Latinidad is a flexible and unstable hybrid construct whose mediated presence remains salient in the new millennium and indexes broader currents of population mixtures, resulting demands, and backlashes from and through the mainstream, which both construct and are constructed by the cultural struggle identified so long ago by Gramsci, amended by Bauman, and articulated to media by Shohat and Stam (1995).
