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US-Mexico border and representations of time, space and history
lmhmich@umich.edu
I study the intersections between genre and nationalism in contemporary cultural production. My work explores how genres, notably melodramas and westerns, once used to promote certain forms of nationalism are reshaped in a neoliberal paradigms. I ask how these new articulations of genre relate to popular imaginings of the nation-state and our current economic configurations.
My case studies all relate to the US-Mexico border. As a site that has long been used to imagine, contest and promote different nationalist sentiments, its current representations are essential to understanding how the nation-state and neoliberal economy are discursively constructed in the present moment. My work spans a variety of formats, focusing at present on television shows and novels.
My graduate work has been generously funded by the Javits Fellowship (four years of tuition and a stipend), the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Michigan, the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan.
In addition to my scholarship, I am one of the founding members of Border Collective, a university sponsored workshop that offers an interdisciplinary forum for work on the US-Mexico border. I also am a member of the translation collective Mareada Rosa.
