Arlene Dávila

Arlene Dávila (born in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican professor of Latino/a Studies. She has contributed to the field of Latino/a Studies as both an author and professor. She is the founding director of The Latinx Project, and has written eight books and many articles on issues ranging from depictions of public images of Latinos, marketing to Latinos, cultural politics in Puerto Rico, and Latinization of the United States. Her research focuses on race and ethnicity, media studies, and Puerto Rican national identities. She is a professor at New York University.

Book descriptions Barrio Dreams: Dávila writes about the Latino and specifically Puerto Rican experience in New York with a focus on social and racial classes. The University of California Press said “Barrio Dreams makes a compelling case that—despite neoliberalism's race-and ethnicity-free tenets—dreams of economic empowerment are never devoid of distinct racial and ethnic considerations.” Latinos, Inc: Dávila explores the increasing marketing to and of Latinos as their population increases in the US. Dávila concludes that Latinos are increasingly exoticized and invisible in the marketplace despite their presence and increase in population. The University of California press describes the book: “In a fascinating discussion of how populations have become reconfigured as market segments, she [Dávila] shows that the market and marketing discourse become important terrains where Latinos debate their social identities and public standing.” Latino Spin: Dávila argues that Latinos do contribute to US society and are more American than Americans. She contrasts her argument with the increasingly common US attitude that Latinos are negatively impacting US national identity. Latinx Art: Dávila draws on numerous interviews with artists, dealers, and curators to explore the problem of visualizing Latinx art and artists. Providing an inside and critical look of the global contemporary art market, Dávila's book is at once an introduction to contemporary Latinx art and a call to decolonize the art world and practices that erase and whitewash Latinx artists. Mambo Montage: Dávila looks at Mambo (a Cuban dance) and the latinization of New York City. Sponsored Identities: Dávila examines the Institute for Puerto Rican Culture, the Puerto Rican national identity, and authenticity in Puerto Rican culture. She also describes commercialization increasingly as culture in Puerto Rico. Culture Works: Dávila shows that the cultural economy, while appearing to be accessible to all, is not. Neoliberal policies and racial and social divides keep the cultural economy specific to certain races and classes. Dávila uses Puerto Rico, New York City, and Buenos Aires as examples as how similar processes of unequal cultural production and distribution of its benefits transcend locales. El Mall: Dávila looks at hopping mall culture that exists in Latin America. She argues that shopping malls anchor significant debates on the future of Latin American societies and influence modernity and democracy.

Published works Books El Mall: The Spatial and Class Politics of Shopping Malls in Latin America. University of California Press, 2016. Culture Works: Space, Value and Mobility Across the Neoliberal Americas NYU Press, 2012. Latino Spin: Public Image and the Whitewashing of Race. NYU Press, 2008 Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos and the Neoliberal City. University of California Press, 2004 Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York, co-edited with Agustin Lao. Columbia University Press, 2001 Sponsored Identities: Cultural Politics in Puerto Rico. Temple University Press, 1997 Latinx Art: Artists, Markets, Politics

Selected articles (2005) El Barrio's ‘We Are Watching You Campaign’: On the Politics of Inclusion in a Latinized Museum. AZTLAN: A Journal of Chicano Studies. 30 (1): 153–178 (2004) El Barrio's 'We Are Watching You Campaign:' On the Politics of Inclusion in a Latinized Museum. AZTLAN: A Journal of Chicano Studies. 30 (1): 153–178 (2004) Empowered Culture? New York City's empowerment Zone and the Selling of El Barrio. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 594: 49–64 (2002) Culture in the Adworld: Producing the Latin Look. In The Social Practice of Media: Anthropological Interventions in the Age of Electronic Reproduction. Lila Abu-Lughod, Faye Ginsburg and Brian Larkin, eds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 264–281 (2000) Mapping Latinidad: Spanish, English and “Spanglish” in the Hispanic TV Landscape. Television and New Media. Vol. 1(1):73-92. Reprinted in Globalization on the Line: Culture, Citizenship and Capital at U.S. Borders. Claudia Sadowski-Smith, editor. St. Martin Press (2000) Talking Back: Hispanic Media and U.S. Latinidad. Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. Vol. 12(1): 37–48. Mary Romero, Jaime Cardenas and Michalle Habell-Pallan, Eds. New York, NY: New York University Press (1998) Local and Diasporic Tainos: Rethinking Taino Reality and Imagery. Latino Review of Books. 3(3): 2–10. Reprinted in Taino Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics. New York: Center for Puerto Rican Studies. Edited by Gabriel Haslip-Viera. pp. 11–30 New York Times Article: “A Fix for Ignorance and Exclusion” Davila wrote this article in April 2011 concerning a possible National Museum of the American Latino. She states that she supports the project because it would highlight Latino-specific history in American history which is lacking.