Maria Elena Cepeda

María Elena Cepeda

Professor of Latina/o Studies

413-597-2523
Hollander Hall Rm 109

Spring 2024

Office hours:  By appointment, both in person and remotely

 

 

Education

B.A. Kenyon College
M.A. University of Michigan
Ph.D. University of Michigan

Areas of Expertise

Intersectional approaches to Latina/x media and popular culture

US Colombian studies

Critical disability studies

Language politics

 

 

Scholarship/Creative Work

BOOKS, EDITED VOLUMES, AND SPECIAL ISSUES:

Failed Colombiana: Essays on Media, Migration, and Latina Madness  (in progress)

Co-editor (with Johana Londoño, Ariana Ochoa Camacho, and Jennifer Harford Vargas),  US Colombianidades from the Margins (in progress)

Co-editor (with Lina Rincón, Johana Londoño, and Jennifer Harford Vargas), Reimagining US Colombianidades: Transnational subjectivities, cultural expressions, and political contestations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

Co-editor (withLina Rincón, Johana Londoño, and Jennifer Harford Vargas), “Reimagining US Colombianidades: Transnational subjectivities, cultural expressions, and political contestations”(special issue of Latino Studies, 8.3, September 2020)

Co-editor (with Dolores Inés Casillas), The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Media (New York: Routledge, 2017)

Musical ImagiNation: U.S.-Colombian Identity and the Latin Music Boom
(New York: New York University Press, 2010)
Co-editor (with Carlos Alamo-Pastrana), “Popular Culture and Youth Latinidades: (Re)Constructing Community, from the Inside and Out,”(special issue of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 16.5, September 2009)
Musical Migrations: Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity in Latin(o) America (with Cándida F. Jáquez and Frances R. Aparicio, eds.; St. Martin’s Press, 2003)

SELECT ARTICLES

“Lo peor que te puede pasar: Notes on Levanta Cola Jeans and Reading the Gendered Diasporic Colombianx Body” (in progress)

“Mentorship, Critical Authoethnography and the Practices of Self-Reflexivity: Investing in an Academy that Does Not Yet Exist” (Communication, Culture and Critique 14:221, 668-674, 2021)

“Thrice Unseen, Forever on Borrowed Time: Latina Feminist Reflections on Mental Disability and the Neoliberal Academy” (South Atlantic Quarterly 120:2, 301-320, 2021)

“Reimagining US Colombianidades: Transnational Subjectivities, Cultural Expressions, and Political Contestations” (with Lina Rincón, Johana Londoño, and Jennifer Harford Vargas (Latino Studies 8.3, 301-325, 2020)

“Latina Feminist Moments of Recognition: Contesting the Boundaries of Gendered Colombianidad in Bomba Estéreo’s “Soy yo'” (Latino Studies, 8.3, 326-342, 2020)

“Putting a “Good Face on the Nation”: Beauty, Memes and the Gendered Rebranding of Global Colombianidad” (WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 46.1-2, 121-138 (Spring-Summer 2018))

“Beyond ‘Filling in the the Gap’: Latina/o Feminist Media Studies and the Politics of Citation,” Feminist Media Studies, 16.2, 344-360 (April 2016)
“Media and the Musical ImagiNation: Contradictory Discourses of Belonging in ‘Nuestro Himno’ and ‘Reggaetón Latino,’” Identities:  Global Studies in Culture and Power, 16.5, 548-572 (September-October 2009)
“When Latina hips make/mark history: Music video in the “new” American
Studies,” Women and Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 18.3, 235-252 (November 2008)
“Shakira as the Idealized, Transnational Citizen: A Case Study of Colombianidad in Transition,” Latino Studies, 1.2, 210-232 (2003)
“Columbus Effects”: The Politics of Crossover and Chronology within the Latin(o) Music “Boom,” Discourse, 23.1, 242-267 (Winter 2001)
“Mucho loco for Ricky Martin, or: The Politics of Chronology, Crossover and Language within the Latin(o) Music ‘Boom,’” Popular Music and Society, 24.3, 55-71(Fall 2000)
“El ‘Beloved Spic’ que no habla English Only: oposición y resistencia en la poesía de Martín Espada, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, XXIV. 3, 517-529 (Spring 2000)

SELECT BOOK AND MAGAZINE ARTICLES

“‘A Cartel of Love’: Medellín, Pablo Escobar, and the Global Scripts of Colombianidad” Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies (Ana Yolanda Ramos-Zayas and Mérida M. Rúa, eds.: New York University Press, 2021)
“Music,” Keywords for Latina/o Studies (Lawrence LaFountain-Stokes, Deborah R. Vargas, and Nancy R. Mirabal, eds.; New York University Press, 2017)
“An Indecent Proposal: Latino Masculinity and the Audience in Latina/o Music Video” (co-author, Alejandra Rosales), The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Media (New York: Routledge, 2017)
 “Marketing, Performing, and Interpreting Multiple Latinidades: Los Tigres del Norte and Calle 13’s ‘América,’” Contemporary Latina/o Media:  Production, Circulation, Politics, 303-321(Arlene Dávila and Yeidy Rivero, eds.; New York University Press, 2014)
 “Singing the ‘Star-Spanglish Banner’”:  The Politics and Pathologization of Bilingualism in U.S. Popular Media,” Beyond el Barrio: Everyday Life in Latina/o America, 27-43 (Gina M. Pérez, Frank Guridy, and Adrian Burgos, Jr., eds.; New York University Press, 2010)
“Survival Aesthetics: U.S. Latinas and the Negotiation of Popular Media,” Latina/o Communication Studies Today, 237-256 (Angharad N. Valdivia, ed.; Peter Lang, 2008)
“Mirando las Estrellas: La Joven Latina en Estados Unidos,” Revista Javeriana, 711, Pontificia Universidad Javieriana, Bogotá, Colombia (January/ February 2005)
 “Miami: From ‘Instant City’ to Global Music Capital,” FORUM/Magazine of the Florida Humanities Council, 32-34 (Winter 2004)
“Mucho loco for Ricky Martin, or: The Politics of Chronology, Crossover and Language within the Latin(o) Music ‘Boom,’” Global Pop, Local Talk, 113-129(Michael T. Carroll and Harris Berger, eds.; University of Mississippi Press, 2003)

SELECTED TRANSLATIONS

“The Transnational Restructuring of Communication and Consumption Practices: Latinos in the Urban Settings of Global Cities,” by Jéssica Retis, in The Routledge Handbook of Latina/o Media (New York: Routledge, 2017)

 “Rock ‘n’ Roll in Peru’s Popular Quarters: Cultural Identity, Hybridity, and Transculturation,” by Luis A. Ramos-García, in Musical Migrations, 199-206 (St. Martin’s Press, 2003)
“La danza de las tijeras in the work of José María Arguedas: The Construction of Indigenous Quechua Identity,” by Juan Ulises Zevallos-Aguilar, in Musical Migrations, 131-146 (St. Martin’s Press, 2003)
“Rendering the Invisible, Visible and the Visible, Invisible: The Colonizing Function of Bailey K. Ashford’s Anti-anemia Campaigns,” by Fernando Feliú, in Foucault in Latin America: Appropriations and Deployments of Discursive Analysis, 153-166 (Benigno L. Trigo, ed.; Routledge, 2002)

Current Committees

  • Standing Grievance Panel