Description:

Throughout the academic year, the Center for Latinx Digital Media invites you to a series of weekly seminars held over Zoom on Thursdays. You can now register (click here) to the upcoming seminar of the Winter 2022 quarter, happening on Thursday, February 24, at 12-1 PM US CT. Professor María Elena Cepeda (Williams College) will give a presentation entitled “Loca/x Epistemologies: Reframing Gendered Madness on the Locatora Radio Podcast.”

Abstract: Drawing on Latina/x Feminist Media Studies, Critical Autoethnography, and Disability Studies, I examine the discursive strategies that popular Radio Locatora podcast hosts Diosa Femme and Mala Muñoz deploy in their attempts to complicate what has historically been cast as gendered madness or “loca” identity in the Latina/o/x community. I also consider how the unique temporality of Radio Locatora renders the podcast a particularly effective conduit for challenging normative constructs around Latina/o/x mental disability and gender.

María Elena Cepeda is author of Musical ImagiNation: U.S.-Colombian Identity and the Latin Music Boom and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Media. Her recent work appears in Communication, Culture & Critique, Latino Studies, and South Atlantic Quarterly, and her commentary is featured in NPR, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone.  

This event is co-sponsored by the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, the Center for Global Culture and Communication, the Department of Radio/Television/Film, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, and the Latina and Latino Studies Program.