My research is interdisciplinary and collaborative. I currently have two main research focuses. Through my analysis of representations, visual and verbal, of Mexican and Mexican Americans, I make visible the intersections between visual rhetoric, material culture, and food studies. Additionally, I am studying the integration of information literacy, inquiry, and critical thinking instruction, in my scholarship of teaching and learning. (For more information on this, please visit my teaching page.)
Within all of my research projects, I am committed to finding the voices, people, and places that have traditionally not been a part of academia and providing a platform for them to speak. As a researcher, I have a strong commitment to ethical, rigorous, interdisciplinary, and collaborative research. A strong tenant of my research is to allow participant voices to be amplified so that knowledge is not only transmitted from the university but is also enriched by voices from our communities.
Within all of my research projects, I am committed to finding the voices, people, and places that have traditionally not been a part of academia and providing a platform for them to speak. As a researcher, I have a strong commitment to ethical, rigorous, interdisciplinary, and collaborative research. A strong tenant of my research is to allow participant voices to be amplified so that knowledge is not only transmitted from the university but is also enriched by voices from our communities.
Book
My co-edited collection Latin@s’ Presence in the Food Industry: Changing How We Think about Food with the University of Arkansas Press released in 2016, takes the holistic culinary approach of bringing together multidisciplinary criticism to explore the diverse, and not always readily apparent, ways that Latin@s navigate and negotiate their roles within the food industry.
The networks Latin@s create, the types of identities they fashion through food, and their relationship to the US food industry are analyzed to understand Latin@s as active creators of food-based communities, as distinctive cultural representations, and as professionals. This collection acknowledges issues of labor conditions, economic politics, and immigration laws—structural vulnerabilities that certainly cannot be ignored—and strives to understand more fully the active and conscious ways that Latina@s create spaces to maneuver global and local food systems and insert themselves as active creators of food-based communities, self cultural representations, and as professionals rather than just laborers (i.e. “braceros”--the reduction of people to “arms” for picking fruits and vegetables).
In 2017, Gourmand International awarded Latin@s' Presence in the Food Industry 3rd "Best Book in the World" under the category of Professionals. Every year, Gourmand International honors the best food and wine books, printed or digital, as well as food television.
The networks Latin@s create, the types of identities they fashion through food, and their relationship to the US food industry are analyzed to understand Latin@s as active creators of food-based communities, as distinctive cultural representations, and as professionals. This collection acknowledges issues of labor conditions, economic politics, and immigration laws—structural vulnerabilities that certainly cannot be ignored—and strives to understand more fully the active and conscious ways that Latina@s create spaces to maneuver global and local food systems and insert themselves as active creators of food-based communities, self cultural representations, and as professionals rather than just laborers (i.e. “braceros”--the reduction of people to “arms” for picking fruits and vegetables).
In 2017, Gourmand International awarded Latin@s' Presence in the Food Industry 3rd "Best Book in the World" under the category of Professionals. Every year, Gourmand International honors the best food and wine books, printed or digital, as well as food television.
Visual Rhetoric and Food Studies |
I study the circulation of images as a means of representation of certain groups, and I attempt to make visible the larger narratives present in, what are now, stereotypes of certain groups. I am particularly interested in interrogating the visual representations of Mexicans/Mexican Americans and Latino populations associated with their food. For example, when one walks into a restaurant there are certain images, colors, and decorations that the business owner has chosen to include or not include in their restaurant space to help situate the consumer. It is here where my main inquiry begins. Specifically focusing on Mexican/Mexican American and Latino restaurants, I investigate how images located in these spaces have come to be a signifier of the ethnic group. I interrogate these images from several different vantage points, namely a combination of qualitative research (including interviews with consumers and restaurant owners) and archival research. Through this work, I make visible the narratives of where stereotypical images come from, how they have circulated, and consequentially how these images came to be associated with Mexican restaurants. Below are pieces I have published on this topic.
From Past to Present: How the Sleeping Mexican Still Has Life: In this forthcoming single-authored peer-reviewed book chapter, I present a potential origin of the sleeping Mexican man – the big-bellied man with a sombrero covering his face usually leaning against a wall or a cactus. Through archival research with newspapers and the Sleeping Mexican Lab at the University of Arizona, Tucson, I analyze the life of the image tracing the image's circulation from photographs to postcards during the Porfirio Diaz era, eventually finding itself as the logo to numerous restaurants.
Unlikely Dinner Guests: Inviting "Everyday" People to the Table of Visual Imagery: In this chapter, within Visual Imagery, Metadata, and Multimodal Literacies Across the Curriculum, I present the results of several focus group discussions I conducted with “everyday” people, consumers of Mexican food, that asked them to provide their insights into what common images they associate with Mexican restaurants and what these images meant to them. Participants provided a wealth of responses that demonstrated how visuals associated with racial and ethnic groups and their food products contributes to the perception of the group. This chapter is representative of the importance of human subject research, and emblematic of my desire to have knowledge flow not only from the university to the community, but from the community to the university.
The Commodification of Mexican Women on Mexican Food Packaging: This chapter, within Food, Feminism and Rhetoric with Southern Illinois University Press, further expands on my framework, commodified perceptions of culture, to specifically examine the use of women in conjunction with Mexican foodstuffs. In particular, this chapter interrogates the "single story" of Mexican foodstuffs by asking readers and consumers to pause when they are in the "Mexican" or "Ethnic" aisle of their grocery stores and critically examine the images we are being fed with our foods.
Food Marketing Industry: Cultural Attitudes Made Visible: This co-authored chapter is an early introduction of my framework, commodified perceptions of culture, that is used to examine how the food marketing industry perpetuates ethnic stereotypes through images paired with foods. In particular, this chapter analyzes the images of Frito Bandito, the sleeping Mexican man, his sombrero, zarape, and tequila, and the Sun Made Girl of Sun Made Raisins in comparison to Ester Hernandez’s Sun Mad and SunRaid. We argue that the rhetorical purpose of these images is an attempt to hide the narrative behind foods and the culture these foods represents in an attempt to enhance the exchange value of the product they are paired with.
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning:
Rhetorical Theory and Information Literacy
According to the Association of College and Research Librarians, information literacy provides students the ability to understand how information is produced and to identify, evaluate, and apply information sources effectively when seeking and using information for a variety of purposes. The Council of Writing Program Administrators's outcome statements provides similar objectives for student learning. Through collaborative teaching with two J. Murrey Atkins Library Librarians, Kim Looby and Natalie Ornat, we have co-created inquiry instruction that integrates rhetorical theory with information literacy. Through our two-year study, we are evaluating the effectiveness of our multi-disciplinary approach to teaching inquiry and critical thinking by assessing students’ ability to identify, evaluate, and apply information sources effectively. More on this can be found under my teaching section.
My research into the scholarship of teaching and learning began early in my career. My co-authored article De aquí y de allá: Changing Perceptions of Literacy through Food Pedagogy, Asset-Based Narratives, and Hybrid Space was recently recognized in the 2018 Best of Journals in Rhetoric and Composition. This article exemplifies my philosophy of looking at students for their assets instead of what they lack as well as amplifying voices from the community to inform the work we do in higher education.
De aquí y de allá: Changing Perceptions of Literacy through Food Pedagogy, Asset-Based Narratives, and Hybrid Spaces: This article presented the results of a piloted after-school program in conjunction with the city’s housing authority. The “Escuelita Program,” as project participants came to call it, used a food-based pedagogy curriculum to challenge deficit thinking and boost students’ (grades K-6) curiosity and engagement around traditional subjects: science, math, reading, and writing. We engaged in the concepts of “funds of knowledge,” (Moll et al., 1992) asset-based thinking (Grabill, 2001), and food pedagogy (Flower and Swan, 2012) to build a curriculum that attempted to bridge home and school knowledge of participants. We proposed that food pedagogy has great rhetorical weight as an entry point to engaging community literacies. We advocated that this framework allows communities traditionally seen as illiterate to be seen for their assets instead of their deficits and this allows community members to be seen as co-constructors of knowledge, not merely as “clients” in need of a service provided by outsiders.
De aquí y de allá: Changing Perceptions of Literacy through Food Pedagogy, Asset-Based Narratives, and Hybrid Spaces: This article presented the results of a piloted after-school program in conjunction with the city’s housing authority. The “Escuelita Program,” as project participants came to call it, used a food-based pedagogy curriculum to challenge deficit thinking and boost students’ (grades K-6) curiosity and engagement around traditional subjects: science, math, reading, and writing. We engaged in the concepts of “funds of knowledge,” (Moll et al., 1992) asset-based thinking (Grabill, 2001), and food pedagogy (Flower and Swan, 2012) to build a curriculum that attempted to bridge home and school knowledge of participants. We proposed that food pedagogy has great rhetorical weight as an entry point to engaging community literacies. We advocated that this framework allows communities traditionally seen as illiterate to be seen for their assets instead of their deficits and this allows community members to be seen as co-constructors of knowledge, not merely as “clients” in need of a service provided by outsiders.
