University of California, Los Angeles

Faculty Member, Chicana & Chicano Studies

Associate Professor

About

    I have two research strands.

    I study how the mass media legitimate social inequity. The APSA recognized my first book, "Brown Tide Rising: Metaphoric Representations of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse" the 2002 Best Book on Ethnic and Racial Politics.

    My new book is on television network news imaging of Latinos. It  focuses on immigration as a national policy issue. It is called "Juan in a 100: the Faces and Stories of Latinos on the Evening News." It will appear in the fall 2012 University of Texas Press catalog.

    Second, Celeste Gonzalez de Bustamante and I edited an anthology of original chapters on the political events of Arizona 2010. We call it: "Arizona Firestorm: Global Immigration Realities, National Media & Provincial Politics." Rowman & Littlefield Publishers will release it in June 2012. See the link below:

https://www.facebook.com/arizonafirestorm

      These days, I am exploring the political power of commercial mass mediated comedy. See my paper on the racial politics of Jay Leno's humor (on this website). Mass mediated political humor will be the topic of my next monograph. I am calling it "The Thin Edge of the Wedge: The Power of Political Humor."

    I also am an empirical sociolinguist. My work in this second strand have led to an edited book and a dozen articles about the languages of Latinos. See my anthology, "Tongue-Tied: The Lives of Multilingual Children in Public Schools."

    I give talks in this second research strand: For example, in November 2010 I gave a keynote at the National Council of Teachers of English on public sphere misunderstandings of the nature U.S. public education.

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