Laura Isabel Serna
Biographic Data
| ID | 706672 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laura Isabel Serna |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laura Isabel |
| FAMILY NAME | Serna |
| SIGNATURE | SERNA L I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern California |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9370-137X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Popular Mexican Masculinity and American Culture in the 1920s: Migrants and Fifís
This essay examines the discourse around Mexican masculinity in the 1920s by looking at the figures of the repatriated migrant and the urban dandy of the period, the fifí . Using evidence from print culture, popular literature, and other sources, it explains how these masculine figures provoked anxieties about sexuality, work, and public space, as well as concerns about how to integrate American mass culture into revolutionary Mexican society. Th…
Pretty People: Movie Stars of the 1990s
In the 1990s, American civil society got upended and reordered as many social, cultural, political, and economic institutions were changed forever. Pretty People examines a wide range of Hollywood icons who reflect how stardom in that decade was transformed as the nation itself was signaling significant changes to familiar ideas about gender, race, ethnicity, age, class, sexuality, and nationality. Such actors as Denzel Washington, Andy Garcia, H…
Material Culture and the Affective Dimensions of Chicana/o History
This research note introduces material in the Josefa L. Serna Papers held at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Library. By examining three objects from the collection, the author suggests that object-centered history can illuminate the interior, that is, the emotional and not just social lives of working class Mexican immigrant subjects
Audiences and Moviegoing
Observers—sociologists, reformers, inspectors, journalists—have been interested in cinema's audiences virtually since the medium's emergence. Their observations constitute a rich source base for scholars that gives us access, however oblique, into the experiences of moviegoers. As these sources show, motion picture exhibition has been a dynamic social space for subjects marked by gender, race, class, national or regional identity, and age. These …
Agustín Lara: A Cultural Biography
Unlovely to look at, Agustín Lara rose from playing pianos in bordellos to international stardom. The musical genre that brought Lara to global fame, the bolero, is a slow, romantic, and sentimental form. It lacks the political resonance of the corrido, with its referents to historical events and relationships of power, but as Andrew Grant Wood notes in the introduction to this book the bolero has historically provided listeners with what he refe…
Anita Maris Boggs
This short essay sketches the career of Anita Uada Maris Boggs, cofounder of the Bureau of Commercial Education, a charitable organization that from the 1910s through the 1930s circulated a library of sponsored films. I argue that Boggs's absence from film historiography has been doubly determined: first by the relative invisibility of educational film, and second by ideologies of gender that obscured women's work in the film industry, broadly co…
La venganza de Pancho Villa
The compilation film La venganza de Pancho Villa (ca. 1930), created by itinerant exhibitor Félix Padilla, combines footage from two national cinematic traditions- those of the United States and Mexico-to construct a biographical film about the regional hero and revolutionary general Francisco "Pancho" Villa. The film's use of found footage offers a retort to American films rife with stereotypical images of Mexican masculinity. However, a close r…
Cinema on the U.S.-Mexico Border: American Motion Pictures and Mexican Audiences, 1896-1930
Land of Necessity: Consumer Culture in the United States-Mexico Borderlands
As a Mexican I Feel It’s My Duty: ” Citizenship, Censorship, and the Campaign Against Derogatory Films in Mexico, 1922–1930
In June of 1930, Dr. J. M. Puig Casauranc, who held the post of Jefe del Departamento del Distrito Federal (a post then somewhat akin to mayor) received a lengthy letter from the Confederación de Sociedades Mexicanas in Los Angeles, California. The letter asked Dr. Puig if a Committee for the Supervision of Film could be constituted in Los Angeles, a committee to be made up of members of the Confederation and the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles.…
As a Mexican I Feel It’s My Duty: ” Citizenship, Censorship, and the Campaign Against Derogatory Films in Mexico, 1922–1930
In June of 1930, Dr. J. M. Puig Casauranc, who held the post of Jefe del Departamento del Distrito Federal (a post then somewhat akin to mayor) received a lengthy letter from the Confederación de Sociedades Mexicanas in Los Angeles, California. The letter asked Dr. Puig if a Committee for the Supervision of Film could be constituted in Los Angeles, a committee to be made up of members of the Confederation and the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles.…
As a Mexican I Feel It’s My Duty: ” Citizenship, Censorship, and the Campaign Against Derogatory Films in Mexico, 1922–1930
In June of 1930, Dr. J. M. Puig Casauranc, who held the post of Jefe del Departamento del Distrito Federal (a post then somewhat akin to mayor) received a lengthy letter from the Confederación de Sociedades Mexicanas in Los Angeles, California. The letter asked Dr. Puig if a Committee for the Supervision of Film could be constituted in Los Angeles, a committee to be made up of members of the Confederation and the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles.…
Cinema on the U.S.-Mexico Border: American Motion Pictures and Mexican Audiences, 1896-1930
Land of Necessity: Consumer Culture in the United States-Mexico Borderlands
La venganza de Pancho Villa
The compilation film La venganza de Pancho Villa (ca. 1930), created by itinerant exhibitor Félix Padilla, combines footage from two national cinematic traditions- those of the United States and Mexico-to construct a biographical film about the regional hero and revolutionary general Francisco "Pancho" Villa. The film's use of found footage offers a retort to American films rife with stereotypical images of Mexican masculinity. However, a close r…
Anita Maris Boggs
This short essay sketches the career of Anita Uada Maris Boggs, cofounder of the Bureau of Commercial Education, a charitable organization that from the 1910s through the 1930s circulated a library of sponsored films. I argue that Boggs's absence from film historiography has been doubly determined: first by the relative invisibility of educational film, and second by ideologies of gender that obscured women's work in the film industry, broadly co…
Audiences and Moviegoing
Observers—sociologists, reformers, inspectors, journalists—have been interested in cinema's audiences virtually since the medium's emergence. Their observations constitute a rich source base for scholars that gives us access, however oblique, into the experiences of moviegoers. As these sources show, motion picture exhibition has been a dynamic social space for subjects marked by gender, race, class, national or regional identity, and age. These …
Agustín Lara: A Cultural Biography
Unlovely to look at, Agustín Lara rose from playing pianos in bordellos to international stardom. The musical genre that brought Lara to global fame, the bolero, is a slow, romantic, and sentimental form. It lacks the political resonance of the corrido, with its referents to historical events and relationships of power, but as Andrew Grant Wood notes in the introduction to this book the bolero has historically provided listeners with what he refe…
Pretty People: Movie Stars of the 1990s
In the 1990s, American civil society got upended and reordered as many social, cultural, political, and economic institutions were changed forever. Pretty People examines a wide range of Hollywood icons who reflect how stardom in that decade was transformed as the nation itself was signaling significant changes to familiar ideas about gender, race, ethnicity, age, class, sexuality, and nationality. Such actors as Denzel Washington, Andy Garcia, H…
Material Culture and the Affective Dimensions of Chicana/o History
This research note introduces material in the Josefa L. Serna Papers held at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Library. By examining three objects from the collection, the author suggests that object-centered history can illuminate the interior, that is, the emotional and not just social lives of working class Mexican immigrant subjects
Popular Mexican Masculinity and American Culture in the 1920s: Migrants and Fifís
This essay examines the discourse around Mexican masculinity in the 1920s by looking at the figures of the repatriated migrant and the urban dandy of the period, the fifí . Using evidence from print culture, popular literature, and other sources, it explains how these masculine figures provoked anxieties about sexuality, work, and public space, as well as concerns about how to integrate American mass culture into revolutionary Mexican society. Th…
Art (7 works) · Art history (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · History (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Archaeology (3 works) · Cinema and Media Studies (3 works)