Directory
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Mary Beltrán |
Expertise and Activities
My work is focused on the production and narration of race, ethnicity, gender, and class in U.S. entertainment media and celebrity culture, with an emphasis on Latina/o and mixed-race representation, and the ways in which media texts and media producers articulate social hierarchies and group and national identities. My research and teaching interests also include critical and cultural studies of film and television, U.S. film and television history, celebrity studies, feminist media studies, and study of media activism and alternative media.
I am an affiliate of the Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies Program and currently spend half of my time teaching courses that are cross-listed with CLS and with students working toward an undergraduate certificate or graduate minor in Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies.
My book, Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom, explores the construction and marketing of Latino and Latina stars in relation to the evolving status of Mexican Americans and other Latinos in the U.S., through focus on how particular stars have been constructed and promoted by Hollywood film studios, television networks, and producers since the silent film era, and how audiences and critics responded to the public images of these performers. With Camilla Fojas I also co-edited Mixed Race Hollywood (NYU Press, 2008), an anthology of film and television studies scholarship on mixed-race representation and stars in film, television, star promotion, and new media texts.
While on sabbatical I am working on a new book manuscript, Post-Race Pop? Interrogating Strategies for Ethnic Diversity in Millennial Media Culture, which responds to claims that we have entered an era of “color-blind” or “post-racial” representation in its exploration of ethnic representation in U.S. television and media culture. Post Race Pop? documents and critiques media industry and production strategies for increased ethnic diversity in the last decade as well as analyzing relevant media texts—including ensemble cast television series such as Lost and tween programming such as Wizards of Waverly Place—and audience response to such programming.
Education
- Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin, 2002
- M.S. University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1993
Honors and Awards
- UW-Madison Institute for Research in the Humanities, Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Sabbatical Fellowship, 2009
- UW Systems Institute on Race and Ethnicity, Research Grant, 2008
- Peabody Center for Media and Society, Invited participant, Peabody/Loyless Seminar on the State of Television , 2007
- Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, UW-Madison, Faculty Development Research Grant, 2007
- UW Systems Institute on Race and Ethnicity, Faculty Diversity Research Award, 2006
- The Ford Foundation, Invited participant, “Media and Communications at a Crossroads: The Role of Scholarship for Media Justice and Reform", 2006
- Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, UW-Madison , Faculty Development Research Grant, 2005
Selected Works
Books
- 2009. Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film & TV Stardom. University of Illinois Press.
- 2008. Mixed Race Hollywood (co-editor with Camilla Fojas). NYU Press.
Articles
- 2005. "The New Hollywood Racelessness: Only the Fast, Furious (and Multi-Racial) Will Survive ." Cinema Journal, (Winter): 50-67 .
- 2005. "Dolores Del Rio, the First ‘Latino Invasion,’ and Hollywood’s Transition to Sound." Aztlán: The Journal of Chicano Studies , (Winter): 55-86.
- 2002. "The Hollywood Latina Body as Site of Social Struggle." Quarterly Review of Film and Video, (19.1): 71-86.
Chapters
- 2008. "When Dolores Del Rio Became Latina: Latina/o Stardom in Hollywood's Transition to Sound." Latina/o Communication Studies Today, Angharad Valdivia, ed. New York: Peter Lang. 27-50.
- 2008. "Introduction: Mixed Race in Hollywood Film and Media Culture,” (co-written with Camilla Fojas)." Mixed Race Hollywood, Mary Beltrán and Camilla Fojas, eds. NYU Press.
- 2005. "Commemoration as Crossover: 'Remembering' Selena." Afterlife as Afterimage: Popular Music and Posthumous Fame, Steve Jones and Joli Jensen, eds. New York: Peter Lang. 81-96.
- 2004. "Más Macha: The New Latina Action Hero." Action and Adventure Cinema, Yvonne Tasker, ed. London: Routledge. 186-200.
Courses
- CA 250 - Survey of Radio, Television, and Film as Mass Media
- CA 347 / CLS 347 - Race, Ethnicity, & Media
- CA 419 / CLS 419 - Latino/as and Media
- CA 613 - Stardom in U.S. Film and Media Culture
- CA 613 - Mixed Race in Film and Media Culture
- CA 950 - Advanced Seminar in Race/ Ethnicity and Entertainment Media
- CA 950 - Critical and Cultural Studies of Stardom
- CA 950 - Media and Social Change (forthcoming)
- CLS 425 / WS 425 - Chicana/Latina Feminisms, Arts, & Media
