Latinx Sound Cultures: Belonging, Resonance, Amplifications

The Latinx Sound Cultures Studies (LSCS) Research Working Group brings together Chicana/x and Latina/x scholars whose research engages with thinking about sound as a medium for the creative formation of political subjects in contemporary media. A group of pre-doctoral fellows support research activities through individual fieldwork, collaborative scholarship, and cross-institutional pedagogical projects.

Research Goals

  • Create a working definition of the emerging field of Latinx Sound Culture Studies.

  • Support new research on sound-based initiatives by gathering case study materials in three geographical regions: the West Coast, Midwest, and East Coast.

  • Build the field of Latinx Sound Cultures Studies through graduate mentorship, undergraduate-centered pedagogical initiatives, and public programming.

Principal Investigators

  • D. Inés Casillas

    D. Inés Casillas, Professor of Chicano and Chicana Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is mapping the emergence of (Mexican) Indigenous-speaking radio stations in California’s central coast.

  • Esther Díaz Martín

    Esther Díaz Martín, Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies and Gender and Women Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is surveying contemporary Latinx-led radio and podcasting projects in Chicago and the Midwest

  • Sara V. Hinojos

    Sara V. Hinojos, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Queens College, CUNY, will investigate the use of language within podcasts by queer, Afro-Latinx hosts based in New York City.

Research Fellows

  • Eliana Buenrostro

    Crossing Latinidades Research Fellow 2022-2023, Ethnic Studies, University of California Riverside.

  • José Manuel Flores

    Crossing Latinidades Reseach Fellow 2022-2023, Department of Rhetoric, University of Texas at El Paso

  • Kristian E. Vasquez

    Crossing Latinidades Research Fellow 2022-2023, Chicana and Chicano Studies. University of California, Santa Barbara

Crip Listening with a Latina Feminist Ear with María Elena Cepeda
Williams College
November, 15, 2022

Suggested Readings:

  • María Elena Cepeda; Thrice Unseen, Forever on Borrowed Time: Latina Feminist
    Reflections on Mental Disability and the Neoliberal Academy. South Atlantic Quarterly 1
    April 2021; 120 (2): 301–320. doi: https://doi-org.proxy.cc.uic.edu/10.1215/00382876-8916046

  • Sara Ahmed; Introduction, Complaint! Duke UP. 2021.
    https://www.dukeupress.edu/complaint

Chicana Punk Epistemologies with Michelle Haball-Pallán and Marlén Ríos-Hernández
University of Washington California State University, Fullerton
March 16, 2023

Suggested Readings:

  • Michelle Habell-Pallán, Sonnet Retman, Angelica Macklin, and Monica De La Torre, Women Who Rock: Making Scenes, Building Communities (Convivencia and Archivista Praxis for a Digital Era), The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities, Routledge, 2018.

  • Marlén Ríos-Hernandez, “Policing Punk and the Surveillance of Difference: The Elks Lodge Police Riot in the Context of “Post”-COINTELPRO Los Angeles” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, 47:1 (Spring 2022): 73-102.

  • Michelle Habell-Pallán, “Girl in a Comma Tweets Chicanafuturism: Decolonial Visions, Social Media and Archivista Praxis”; Altermundos: Latin@ Speculative Literature, Film, and Popular Culture. Eds. Catherine J. Merla-Watson and B.V. Olguin. UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press; Distributed by University of Washington Press, 2017.

  • Michelle Habell-Pallán, “Hazlo tú mismo (Do-it-yourself”; o DIY), Años 1980-2000." in Marisol Berrios-Miranda, Shannon Dudley, and Michelle Habell-Pallán, American Sabor: Latinos and Latinas in American Popular Music, University of Washington Press, 2017, pp. 202-263.

  • Michelle Habell-Pallán, “‘Death to Racism and Punk Revisionism’: Alice Bag’s Vexing Voice and the Unspeakable Influence of Canción Ranchera on Hollywood Punk,”in Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt edited by Eric Weisbard, Duke University Press, 2012.

The Sonic Geographies of Anti-Border Music with Roberto D. Hernández
San Diego State University and Yaotl Mazahua, Aztlan Underground

Suggested Readings and Listenings: