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Elizabeth Engelhardt, Chair Burdine 437, Mailcode B7100, Austin, TX 78712 • 512-471-7277

Nicole Guidotti-Hernández

Professor Ph.D., Cornell University

Associate Professor
Nicole Guidotti-Hernández

Contact

  • Phone: 512-232-6313
  • Office: BUR 454
  • Office Hours: Wednesdays from 11:30-1:30pm in Burdine 454 and Tuesday from 8-9am in WMB 5.102
  • Campus Mail Code: B7100

Biography

Dr. Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández comes to the University of Texas as Associate Professor of American Studies after serving for eight years on the faculty of the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona. She received her doctorate degree from Cornell University in 2004 and her M.A. from Cornell University in 2000. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1997. 

Research Interests

Professor Guidotti-Hernández research interests intersect with a number of fields and areas: Transnational Feminisms,Critical Race Studies,Chicana/o Studies, Latina/o Studies, Borderlands History, American Studies, Violence and Citizenship, and Indigeneity and Nationalisms.

Her book titled Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S.  and  Mexican National Imaginaries with Duke University Press is a feminist intervention into discourses of nationalism, mestizaje and victimization that characterize the historicization of violence along the border between 1851 and 1910. Her articles such as “Reading Violence, Making Chicana Subjectivities” appear in anthologies such as Techno/futuros: Genealogies, Power, Desire (2007), edited by Nancy Raquel Mirabal and Agustin Lao-Montes. She has also published in journals such as Women’s Studies International Forum, Social Text, The Latinamericanist, and Latino Studies, where her article “Dora the Explorer, Constructing “Latinidades” and the Politics of Global Citizenship” is one of the most downloaded articles in the history of the journal.

She is also at work on two new projects. First, ¡Santa Lucia! Contemporary Chicana and Latina Cultural Reinterpretations of Saint Iconographies, examines kitschy and queered representations of Catholic saints in literary, self-help, visual and performative forms. These alternative saint iconographies provide a site for theorizing subjectivity as they reinterpret the deeply disturbing and often violent hagiographies of Catholic saints as queered or kitsch cultural allegories. Second, Red Devils and Railroads: Race, Gender and Capitalism in the Transnational Nineteenth Century Mexico Borderlands, tracks the development of the railroad and gendered relations at both the southern Mexico borderlands between Guatemala, Belize and Chiapas and the U.S./Mexico border to the north. The project examines how racialized masculinity, femininity, representations and performances of gender were some of the most contentious sites where power was enacted, negotiated, and redistributed.

AMS 393 • Intro Readings In Amer Studies

30930 • Fall 2013
Meets W 300pm-600pm BUR 436B
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Consent from Instructor Required

AMS 310 • Intro To American Studies

30655 • Spring 2013
Meets MWF 1000am-1100am GAR 0.102
(also listed as HIS 315G )
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Introduction to American Studies is an interdisciplinary introduction to the historical exploration of American cultures. The class is designed to introduce you to some of the major themes and ideas in American history and culture, as well as to familiarize you with some of the methods and materials that are used in the interdisciplinary study of American societies. Utilizing both historical and contemporary perspectives, and drawing from a wide range of approaches, we will take as our central motif the importance of citizenship, belonging, and inequality. Alongside readings in U.S. literature and history, students will use Keywords for American Cultural Studies and analyze how each keyword appears throughout the course readings. Overall, the course incorporates a sense of historical change of U.S. cultures over time.

Learning outcomes:

*Students will develop a critical vocabulary for taking about key words and concepts in the field.

*Students will understand and demonstrate the role of interdisciplinary study

*Students will learn a brief historiography of the field

*Writing assignments, class participation and attendance, quizzes, and exams will be the measure of these learning outcomes.

                   

Requirements

Class Attendance and Participation             30%

Quizzes                                                   10%

Position papers                                        15%

Midterm                                                  20%                         

Final Exam                                              25%

 

Possible Texts

Journals of Christopher Columbus

Powhatan “Letter to Captain John Smith”

Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass

Burgett & Hendler, Keywords for American Cultural Studies

Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Walmart

Anthony Macias, Mexican American Mojo

Films:

When the Levees Broke

Smoke Signals

 

Partially fulfills legislative requirement in American History.

Flag(s): Cultural Diversity

AMS 370 • Latina/O Pop

30695 • Fall 2012
Meets MW 330pm-500pm BUR 228
(also listed as MAS 374 )
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Description

This course examines how Latinas/os have been a major force in the production of  popular culture. In particular we will critically examine discourses of “Latinidad” (a seamless construction of Latinos as a monolithic group) in the corporate production of identities.  This lack of attention to national origin and historical specificity is one definition of Latinidad.  Latinidad also provides the contradictory grounds where consumer culture meets Latina/o performance. Some artists choose to reappropriate commercial spaces as sites of empowerment, while others are complicit in perpetuating stereotypical representations of Latinas/os.  With special attentiveness to the body,  we will explore the construction of Latina/o identities as they influence and produce particular racial, sexual and gendered identities. The body becomes an essential marker of “Latinidad,”  which is constantly connected to notions of sexuality. We will also examine the material effects of such cultural and commercial practices upon U.S. Latino populations, reminding us that there are real-world implications for these performances as they commodify Latina/o culture.  To account for the shifts in notions of performance and cultural practices, the focus of the course will center Latina/o/Chicana/o musical production, movies, television, advertising, magazines, literary texts, performance art, murals, installation art, music videos, and animation within a historical context.                 

 

Requirements

Class Participation (discussions and attendance)          25%

Oral Presentation                                                      5%

Quizzes                                                                    15%

Essay 1 and 2                                                           25%

Prospectus Final Essay                                               5%

Final Paper                                                                25%

 

Possible Texts

Habel-Palan and Romero, Latina/o Popular Culture

Leguizamo, Freak

Lipsitz, Footsteps in the Dark

Rivera, New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone

 

Films/ TV Shows

1951-1957-I Love Lucy

1997- Selena

1998- Freak

2001-Dora The Explorer

 

Upper-division standing required. Students may not enroll in more than two AMS 370 courses in one semester.

Flag(s): Writing, Cultural Diversity

AMS 370 • Fem Intervntns Borderlands His

30853 • Spring 2012
Meets TTH 1230pm-200pm JES A217A
(also listed as MAS 374, WGS 340 )
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This seminar will provide undergraduates with an in-depth understanding of the social, economic, and spatial transformations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries U.S.- Mexico borderlands. In particular, we will examine how Indian removal, the Texas wars for Independence, the Mexican American war of 1848, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo continue to influence how ideas of nation, space and citizenship (or lack thereof) are articulated in these regions today. Lastly, this course operates from a feminist scholarly perspective, demonstrating the role of both transnational analysis and the pivotal role of the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality in forming this distinct regional history.

In addition, students will engage in their own archival research projects during the semester.  Juxtaposed with contextual historical and methodological essays, we will examine the concerns, anxieties and preoccupations with the contested nature of gender, race, subjectivity and sexuality in the nineteenth and early twentieth century U.S./Mexico Borderlands.                 

 

Requirements

25% Final Paper

10% Prospectus and Bibliography

10% Presentation

25% Position Papers

30% Attendance and Class Participation

 

Possible Texts

Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of A Woman

James Brooks, Captives and Cousins

Ned Blackhawk, Violence Over the Land

Dena Gonzlaez, Refusing the Favor

Guidotti-Hernández, Unspeakable Violence

Adina de Zavala, History and Legends of the Alamo and Other Missions in and around San Antonio

Jovita Gonzalez, Dew on the Thorn

Encarnación Pinedo, El Cocinero Español

 

Upper-division standing required.  Students may not enroll in more than two AMS 370 courses in one semester.

Flag(s): Writing

Publications

Duke University Press, Latin America Otherwise Series. Forthcoming, September 2011

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