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Arlene DavilaProfessor of Anthropology , Social and Cultural AnalysisPh.D. 1996 (Cultural Anthropology), The Graduate Center, CUNY; M.A. 1990 (Anthropology and Museum Studies), NYU; B.A. 1987 (Anthropology), Tufts University. Email: Phone: 212-998-7592 Personal Homepage: http://arlenedavila.com |
Areas of Research/Interest: race and ethnicity; nationalism; media studies; political economy, globalization; the politics of museum and visual representation; urban studies; consumption; Latinos in the U.S.
Select Publications:
Books:
Culture Works: Space, Value and Mobility Across the Neoliberal Americas. NYU Press, 2012.
Latino Spin: Public Image and the Whitewashing of Race. NYU Press, 2008
Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos and the Neoliberal City. University of California Press, 2004
Latinos Inc.: Marketing and the Making of a People. University of California Press, 2001.
Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York, co-edited with Agustin Lao. Columbia University Press, 2001.
Sponsored Identities: Cultural Politics in Puerto Rico. Temple Univeristy Press, 1997
Selected Articles:
2004 El Barrio's 'We Are Watching You Campaign:' On the Politics of Inclusion in a Latinized Museum. AZTLAN: A Journal of Chicano Studies. 30 (1): 153-178.
2004 Empowered Culture? New York City's empowerment Zone and the Selling of El Barrio. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 594: 49-64.
Current News / Projects
Updated November 2012
This year I celebrated the publication of my most recent book, “Culture Works: Space Value and Mobility Across the Neoliberal America” (NYU Press) which examines the growing rentability of culture and the arts in contemporary Latino/a and Latin American cities drawing from fieldwork in Puerto Rico, Latino/a New York and Buenos Aires. Additionally, the second edition of Latinos Inc.: Marketing and the Making of a People was reissued with a new preface by UC Press.
Among a variety of invited talks and conferences, I enjoyed presenting a keynote on the Mexican-American studies ban in Arizona at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity; participating in the interdisciplinary conference on Junot Diaz's work at Stanford U., and co-chairing the Latino Studies Program at the Latin American Studies Association. I continued to participate in a documentation project with the Smithsonian and the Advertising Education foundation on ethnic imagery in advertising and organized a very successful conference on Latino/a Latin American Media today, looking at some of the key changes in the global political economy and the landscape of Latin@ media.
I’m currently working on an edited collection drawing from this conference, featuring a number of key interdisciplinary media and Latino/a Latin American studies scholars. I also started a new project on the global industry of shopping malls in “emerging” Latin American cities, and started some fieldwork in Colombia. Most immediately I’ll be presenting a number of talks on “Culture Works” while planning a second Latino/a media conference in the Spring 2013.
