Latina/o Communication Studies

Bernadette Marie Calafell identifies the project of her book as “situating performance not necessarily on a formal stage but on the stage we call our lives” (p. 137). After making a case for a multidisciplinary analysis that is rooted in communication studies, performance studies, and Latina/o studies, Calafell invites the reader to the stage of her life. She begins the first chapter by reflecting on her first experiences as a graduate student whose “identity was so entrenched in Chicana rhetoric and the Southwest” (p. 23). Describing the overwhelming sense of loss she felt when arriving in North Carolina allows her to theorize the exile's experience of searching for community in a place that is so different than the home she has left behind. Calafell reflects on the role that memories and a shared sense of loss play in the forming of new communities and demonstrates how exiles often circulate a performance of constructed memories that they have associated with home. Such discussions have been foundational to understanding diaspora formations and Calafell makes a strong case for how this research has implications for performance studies. Her nuanced analysis of how both “authenticity” and memories are constructed provides a useful context from which performance studies, and critical communication studies more broadly, can understand contemporary practices of forging community through media. In addition, she moves the discussion of diaspora in new directions by making links between the experiences of Cuban-Americans in Miami and Chicanos in the South. These links are provocative and offer contributions to the fields of Geography, Urban Studies, and Latino Studies, among other disciplines

Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Diaspora · Identity (music · Linguistics · Media studies · Performance studies · Rhetoric · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Music History and Culture · Social Media and Politics

• Border Matters

  José David Saldívar•Border Matters•1997

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