I'm an author, composer-performer, and scholar born and raised in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. I was trained as a musician, literary critic, and interdisciplinary humanities scholar, and my work brings these and other areas together through geographically specific cultural research. I design and create works that move across media forms, presentational genres, and intellectual traditions; these have included collaborative albums and standalone musical pieces, academic essays, nonfiction books, live performances, art installations, sound design for theater, films, and new media projects. Many of my projects have been collaborative, and new research questions often emerge as I travel across creative spaces—archives, music studios, bandstands, concert halls, seminar rooms, writing desks. For me, this ongoing, iterative practice refuses boundaries separating academic disciplines and embraces border thinking.
Music and Sound Studies; Cultural History; Comparative Media Poetics; Modernity/Coloniality; U.S.–Mexico Border Poetics and Narratives; Chicanx and Latinx Media and Cultures; Relational Studies of Race and Ethnicity; Critical Nonfiction; American Popular Cultures