Faculty

Isabel Molina Guzman.

Isabel Molina Guzman

228 Gregory Hall
(217) 244-1419
imolina - at - illinois.edu

Education

Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School (Communications)

Affiliations

Associate Professor of Communications
Associate Professor of Latina/o Studies
Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies

Course Specialties

U.S. Latina/o media, Ethnic and Race Media Studies, Commodification of Identity

Background

Molina's research and teaching strives to combine her academic interests with her professional experiences as a journalists and communications specialist. Additionally, her interdisciplinary training in humanistic and social scientific approaches drives her research projects on the social construction of identity and contemporary popular culture. Finally, Molina's commitment to publicly engaged scholarship informs her contemporary analysis of Latinas in the media, U.S. immigration politics and the media commodification of racialized ethnic communities.

Research/Creative Endeavor

Molina is currently completing a book with New York University Press on the contemporary popularity of iconic Latinas and Latina-themed media programming, such as America Ferrera and ABC's "Ugly Betty." The book explores why Latinas have gained such prominence in the U.S. media and the social and political implications of such hypervisibility within the anti-immigration context. She is also working on an edited collaboration with Paul Allatson (U of Technology Sydney) exploring the international attention surrounding the 2000 Elián González custody case. The book brings together a group of international scholars and journalists writing about Elián to explore the role of children as spectacles in the production of the national and transnational imagination. Elements of both projects have appeared in numerous journal articles and edited book collections.

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