Contemporary Latina/o media displays very distinct consumption and production patterns: while so-called "old" media formats such as print media and radio are languishing among mainstream audiences, they continue to thrive among Latina/o consumers. Simultaneously, new media forms such as mobile media are rapidly gaining currency among Latinas/os, particularly as a relatively economical means of maintaining contact with family, friends, and business associates in Latin America and beyond. Moreover, Latina/o media has historically enjoyed intimate production ties to Latin America and the Caribbean. These are but two of the primary features that render Latina/o media intrinsically transnational and often marginalized or ignored by mainstream academic disciplines. This panel includes authors from a forthcoming compilation edited by María Elena Cepeda and Dolores Inés Casillas, which aims to highlight and examine all of the unique facets of Latina/o media dynamics as indicative of broader global media trends.
The volume itself is distinctive in that it is transnational in scope, comprehensive and intersectional in approach, and addresses a wide range of media formats in English, Spanish, and bilingual forms.
This panel features three unique and provocative papers that challenge traditional, disciplinary approaches to studies of race and media and is chaired and moderated by Dolores Inés Casillas. For instance, despite the "crisis in journalism" touted by the media, Zatynka Martinez argues that the ethnic press has largely been absent within these discussions of crisis. Her paper situates the San Francisco bilingual neighborhood newspaper El Tecolote in relation to two models that have been prescribed for rescuing print journalism: publishing newspapers via nonprofit organizations and newspaper partnerships with universities. In a similar vein, the co-authored paper by María Elena Cepeda and Alejandra Rosales note the scholarly gaps in the areas of Latina/o Audience Studies and Latina/o music video. Here, they engage the interlocking questions of Latino masculinity, representation, and the audience in the music video "Propuesta Indecente" ("Indecent Proposal") (2013) by U.S.-Dominican performer Romeo Santos. They specifically emphasize the often contradictory content of "Propuesta Indecente" as well as the dissonant nature of audience interpretations of it. Last, Aida Hurtado examines how Latinas are represented within international editions of the fashion powerhouse, Vogue Magazine. As Cepeda (2015) notes, Latinas have long garnered increased attention within marketing strategies that consistently cast them as “good” gendered, raced, and classed consumers, undercutting any notion of a gender-neutral economy. Based on an impressive trove of data, Hurtado's paper focuses on the consumption of Latina representations within the recurrent tropes of "sex, service, and scenery." In many ways, these exciting papers were made possible precisely because the emerging field of Latina/o Media Studies is owed to an interdisciplinary group of scholars who pushed the field to its current ambitious and exciting state of scholarship.
