Description: This is the first book within the field of communication studies to map the terrain of Latina/o performance. Using rhetorical criticism and performance ethnography, the book examines performance from a variety of perspectives: from identity and community in everyday life, to how it intersects with popular culture. Discussions - from Ricky Martin to Chicana feminist pilgrimages to issues of diaspora - contribute to the book's argument that the relationship between rhetorical scholarship and emerging performance work has largely been ignored. Latina/o Communication Studies aims to challenge this split by creating a more complex and less Eurocentric understanding of rhetoric. This rich and informative book contributes to a more nuanced understanding of race and ethnicity and attests to the importance of Latina/o studies in the field of communication.
Review Quotes: «Bernadette Marie Calafell's work captures the shifting contours of Latina/o identity and culture in nuanced and interesting ways. Situated at the crossroads of multiple identities and multiple disciplinary vocabularies, Calafell's text provides new ways of understanding Latina/o cultural experiences. Insightful, provocative, and rigorous, Calafell's theorization and analysis of Latina/o identity makes an important contribution to the field.» (Fernando Delgado, Hamline University)
«Bernadette Marie Calafell provides an illuminating analysis of contemporary performative responses to displacement by U.S. Latinos. Her account is given in the first and third person, in both the intimate terms of an auto-ethnography and the objective terms of social critique. A wonderful read of the most up-to-date Latina/o theory!» (Linda Alcoff, Syracuse University)