UC Davis experts: Mexican and Latino culture

The UC Davis faculty has a broad expertise regarding Mexico-U.S. issues. Spanish-language media members, please note that everyone on the list is fluent in Spanish. If you need information on a topic not listed, please contact Claudia Morain at the UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9841, cmmorain@ucdavis.edu.

• Mexican indigenous writers and cultural traditions
• Mexican and Latino cinema
• Dance in the Americas
• Latino poetry
• Mexico's cultural critic Carlos Monsiváis
• Central American folktales

Mexican indigenous writers and cultural traditions

Inés Hernández-Avila's scholarship and creative work focuses on cultural/intellectual connections between Chicanas, Native American women and indigenous women of Mexico. The associate professor of Native American studies is also known for her work on issues of identity and representation in relation to indigenismo (being indigenous) and mestizaje (being of mixed race) in the Chicana/o community. Her current research/creative projects include a book looking at the roots of "danza Azteca" in the U.S., on the Conchero dance tradition of Mexico and a book on a national movement of writers in indigenous languages in Mexico known as ELIAC (Escritores en Lenguas Indigenas or Writers of Indigenous Languages). Hernández-Avila is also co-director of the Chicana/Latina Research Center, a member of the UC Committee on Latino Research and a poet. Contact: Inés Hernández-Avila, Native American Studies, (fluent in Spanish) (530) 752-4394, ighernandez@ucdavis.edu.

Mexican and Latino cinema

Sergio de la Mora , assistant professor of Chicana/o studies, has been choosing Mexican and Latino film and video for screening since 1995, working primarily through Cine Accion, a San Francisco based nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion of Latin American and Latino film. He is an established authority in Mexican cinema, recognized both in Mexico and elsewhere. He has written numerous articles on Mexican film that have appeared in Jump Cut, Film Quarterly, and the Journal of Film and Video. His current book project is titled "Virile Nationalism: Mexican Cinema, the State, and the Formation of a National Consciousness." He is also completing a study on the politics of programming for U.S. Latino film festivals. Contact: Sergio de la Mora, Chicana/o Studies, (530) 754-8743, (fluent in Spanish) sedelamora@ucdavis.edu.

Dance in the Americas

Zoila Mendoza, associate professor in Native American studies, is a sociocultural anthropologist who studies performance and dance in the Americas and Africa. She has looked at festivals, carnivals and dance troupes, looking at how race, ethnicity and politics play out in dance. "Dance is a whole world, looking at conflicts that emerge based on gender, nationalism, regionalism and transationalism as they define a local identity," she says. She can talk about the cultural significance of folk dances and their choreography, costumes, dance rituals and the music used in dance. Contact: Zoila Mendoza (fluent in Spanish), Native American studies, (530) 754-9283, zsmendoza@ucdavis.edu.

Latino poetry

Francisco X. Alarcón, Spanish lecturer and national award-winning bilingual poet, can talk about gay and lesbian Latino poetry and bilingual children's poetry. He is compiling an anthology titled Boca a Boca / Mouth to Mouth: A Gay Latino Poetry Anthology to be published by the University of California Press. Alarcón is the author of 10 volumes of poetry, including Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992), De amor oscuro / Of Dark Love (Santa Cruz: Moving Parts Press, 1991 and 2001), Body in Flames / Cuerpo en llamas (Chronicle Books, l990). His volumes of bilingual children's poetry have garnered three Pura Belpré Honor Awards from the American Library Association and the National Parenting Publications Gold Medal. He has been a recipient of the Danforth and Fulbright fellowships, and has been awarded several literary prizes, including the 1998 Carlos Pellicer-Robert Frost Poetry Honor Award by the Third Binational Border Poetry Contest. Contact: Francisco Alarcon, Spanish, (fluent in Spanish) (530) 752-1022, fjalarcon@ucdavis.edu.

Cultural critic Carlos Monsiváis

For the past 40 years, "new journalists" like Joan Didion, Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe have brought a personal literary approach to reporting that changed how the public interprets the news. However, maybe the best of the bunch isn’t from the United States but Mexico, says the author of "Carlos Monsiváis: Culture and Chronicle in Contemporary Mexico." UC Davis Spanish assistant professor and former journalist Linda Egan says Monsiváis has become Mexico’s national conscience. He built a reputation through five collections of lierary journalism chronicles, beginning with "Dias de Guardar" in 1970. Mexicans are also familiar with Monsiváis through a weekly newspaper column he published for decades in the capital’s most prestigious cultural supplements and dailies. Media contacts: Linda Egan, Spanish, (fluent in Spanish) (530) 752-1035, ldegan@ucdavis.edu.

Media contacts:

• Claudia Morain at the UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9841, cmmorain@ucdavis.edu
  

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