American Studies Faculty and Staff

The trajectory of my intellectual development has been profoundly influenced by my personal history and life experiences. My father was a native of Barranquilla, Colombia; my mother's family is deeply rooted in the upstate New York/Pennsylvania region. When I was a child, my family moved back and forth frequently between Colombia and the US, so I grew up fully bi-lingual and bi-cultural, an experience I consider foundational to my later development as a scholar. Because of my bicultural background, I am particularly intrigued by border cultures and cultural borderlands because they offer highly nuanced ways of understanding the layered and hybrid identities characteristic of Latinas/os such as myself. My research focuses broadly on Latin/o American popular music—although my work has been less concerned with music as an artifact than as a form of human expression akin to language, whose expressive forms—and their meanings—are culturally produced. My approach is comparative and cross-regional, analyzing the musical practices of local communities not in isolation, but rather in relation to other proximate groups, and always in relationship to global transnational circuits and cultural flows.

Reading Reggaeton: Historical, Critical and Aesthetic Perspectives, edited by Raquel Rivera, Deborah Pacini Hernandez and Wayne Marshall, Duke University Press (forthcoming).

The Latino Musical Mosaic: Music, Race and Place, Temple University Press (in preparation)

Rockin' Las Americas: Rock Music Cultures across Latin/o America, co-edited with Eric Zolov and Hector Fernandez L'Hoeste, University of Pittsburgh Press (2004). Translation to be published by Fondo de Cultura Económica, Colombia.

Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music. Philadelphia: Temple University Press (1995).

“Latino Popular Music: Which Latins? Whose Music?” in A Companion to Latino Studies, edited by Juan Flores and Renato Rosaldo, Blackwell Publishing (in press).

“Latinos in Cambridge: An ethnic community in transition,” in Latinos in New England, edited by Andres Torres, Temple University Press (2006)

“The Emergence of Rap Cubano: An Historical Perspective,” in Music, Space and Race: Popular Music and Cultural Identity, edited by Sheila Whitely, London: Ashgate (2004).

“Between rock and a hard place: Negotiating rock in revolutionary Cuba, 1960-1980 (with Reebee Garofalo). In Rockin' Las Americas: Rock Music Cultures across Latin/o America, co-edited by Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Eric Zolov and Hector Fernandez L'Hoeste, University of Pittsburgh Press

Rockefeller Foundation conference grant at Bellagio Study and Conference Center (Principal Organizer), 2002. Project title: "Rockin' Las Americas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin America”

American Philosophical Society General Grant, 1996. Project title: "Music of the African Diaspora in Contemporary Cuba."

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers, 1995. Project title: "A view from the south: Spanish Caribbean perspectives on world beat and African cultural identity."