As can be seen in both my publications and conference papers, my research interests span both sides of the U.S./Mexico border. Before my dissertation, I was almost exclusively a contemporary Mexicanist, but the topic of gay Chicano authors opened my eyes to a whole another world of research interests north of the Rio Bravo. My current areas of fascination are Latinos on U.S. television and Mexican stand-up comedy and, of course, Gay Chicano authors, the subjects of my 2019 book Capturing Mariposas.
My interests include:
- Contemporary Mexican Literature, Culture & Politics (particularly modernity and modernization)
- Mexican stand-up comedy
- Latino/a Literature, Culture & Media
- Concepts of Latinidad
- Border Studies
- Cognitive approaches to literature and culture (including empathy and sympathy, and surprise)
- The digital humanities (in particular, their influence on the book market)
- Sociology & Migration Studies (within the Americas)
Articles and Abstracts
2019
Capturing Mariposas: Reading Cultural Schema in Gay Chicano Literature
The Ohio State University Press
The volume of works by gay Chicano authors has exploded in recent years, but we still do not speak of them as a genre in their own right, and they have mostly been shut out of academic discourse. This book aims to remedy that gap, bringing these authors into the academic conversation by examining how they challenge, reaffirm and transform cultural schema in the eyes of the reader in an analysis based in narratology and the cognitive sciences.
This reader centered approach diverges from most academic work being done in Queer Latinx Studies, which falls in the post-structuralist camp. As a consequence of this, most studies in this area consider the power of representation as lying in the artifact itself. This study aims to recenter that discussion, looking at the power of representation as lying in the reader, how they process a book and what they may do with it in the wider world. I consider this an expansion of the realist position-that identities true meaning and consequence for those not taking part in the academic conversation-and hold that, for a genre at the intersection of two marginalized groups (queers and Latinos), we in the academy miss something important if we do not consider these real world implications.
2019
The Cost of Citizenship: Assimilation and Survival in Cristela
Latino Studies 17:4
The American dream narrative advances that any citizen can achieve success through hard work, but research shows that meritocracy is continually denied to minorities both systemically and through acts of gatekeeping. ABC’s Cristela (2014–2015) presents a quintessential American dream narrative, and we are invited to cheer for the legal intern protagonist because she is hard-working, well-educated and sacrifices to get ahead. Nevertheless, Cristela faces strong gatekeeping from Anglo law firm owner Trent Culpepper. How will she respond? To understand how the protagonist surmounts this gatekeeping, this article considers circumstances of series production which necessitated speaking to two audiences simultaneously. For Anglo viewers, Cristela encodes submission to power structures as a positive act of assimilation, while for Latinos, it develops a narrative of submission as an ambivalent survival strategy. The cost of citizenship thus becomes what Cristela must sacrifice to gain access to the American dream, portraying the complexity of “making it” in America.
2017
This article scrutinizes stand-up comedy as an act of memoir, particularly how gay Mexican comedian Manu NNa recasts his life as entertainment in his 2017 Netflix showcase Simplemente Manu NNa. Critically, the comic shares graphic details about his active sex life, much to the audience’s delight, becoming a prime example of the sinvergüenza (shameless one) that La Fountain-Stokes describes in his 2011 essay. In the process, he challenges a deradicalized homonormativity that has steadily encroached upon Mexico’s LGBT community, a move that had pushed what was fought to be made public—the sexual freedom exemplified in Manu NNa’s act—back into the private sphere to produce a more widely palatable queer image. Bush examines how Manu NNa challenges this homonormativity, resisting a dominant cultural storyline and casting himself as a sinvergüenza who takes pride in being a joto.
2015
Representations of Latinos on U.S. daytime soap operas have increased substantially in recent years, even as the number of soaps continues to decline. Nevertheless, the ethnicity of these characters continues to be marked in ways that is not true of other white and African-American characters, who are usually portrayed as culturally similar. What is of interest here are those instances and scenes that specifically call attention to the ethnicity of these Latina/o characters, and how it otherizes them within the context of the show, creating what I will term a flexible Latinidad. The study explores this idea of flexible Latinidad in two soaps, One Life to Live and Passions, arguing that the former has often connected Latinidad to the role of the gang and the use of Spanish dialog, while the latter has frequently reduced Latinidad to a mere stereotype used against Latina/o characters themselves. I later explore the consequences of employing this flexible Latinidad, including a systematic avoidance of Latino/Latino relationships, and the possible reasons behind it—an almost complete lack of non-white voices behind the scenes.
2015
Rejecting Modernity in Parra’s Nostalgia de la sombra
Hispanófila 173: 365-378.
The recent sharp focus on the Northern Mexican narrative has occurred for a variety of reasons, many of which have their roots in the societal differences along the northern frontier in comparison to Central and Southern Mexico: an intense interplay with the United States and burgeoning cities that have seen an influx of both migrants and maquiladoras. On its face, Eduardo Antonio Parra’s Nostalgia de la sombra falls along the lines of exploring a society beset by both change and unsettling violence. The novel recounts the transformation of protagonist Bernardo, a family man from Monterrey, into a cold blooded contract killer based out of Cocoyoc, Morelos. However, the novel can be considered in a different light by not just focusing on the violence at face value, but instead in considering the geographies in which it takes place: Monterrey, Mexico City and Cocoyoc. In their own particular ways, these three locations tell the story of Mexico’s socioeconomic condition in the late 20th century. With this in mind, Nostalgia de la sombra can be read as a strong critique and, ultimately, a profound rejection of modernity and modernization and their core tenets on the part of the protagonist, and this is something we see in the novel both geographically, in the three locations already mentioned, and in the essences of the female characters that surround Bernardo: his wife Victoria, the migrant La Muda, and Maricruz Escobedo, the business woman.
2011
La religión como ganga: La maja barata de Xavier Velasco
The Delaware Review of Latin American Studies 12:2 (2011). Web.
“Confieso que he vendido,” de Xavier Velasco, toma la forma de instrucciones de cómo vender un producto llamado La Maja Barata, que promete un resultado muy parecido a las grandes religiones. No obstante, aunque ofrece todo lo bueno de la religión, no somete a sus participantes al proceso arduo de lograrlo — renunciaciones personales, oraciones, etc. Por eso, creo que estos capítulos presentan una fuerte mercantilización de la religión, lo cual se va a explorar en tres partes: las ideas de Marx sobre el proceso de cosificación y el fetichismo de los bienes, las de Bauman sobre el consumo en la sociedad moderna, y finalmente cómo sus ideas aplican a la obra de Velasco