Laura Isabel Serna

Assistant Professor of History

Laura Isabel Serna received her B.A. from the University of California Berkeley, her Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and Ph.D. (2006) from Harvard University. She is completing a book manuscript, Making Cinelandia: American Films and Mexican Film Culture before the Golden Age 1896-1936 (forthcoming, Duke University Press). Making Cinelandia examines how Mexican audiences, both in the Republic and in migrant communities in the United States, incorporated the films and film culture produced in the United States into Mexico’s postrevolutionary nation building project. She has begun a second project, tentatively titled Brownface, that explores the intersection of the U.S. film studios’ strategies for representing Mexico and Mexicans and the labor of Mexican migrants in those studios as the providers of low-wage labor as extras, stuntmen, seamstresses, and manual laborers. Other research interests include translation as a narrative strategy in silent and early sound cinema, the history of Spanish language television, transnational cultural history, and cinema-going’s relationship to consumer culture.

Dr. Serna’s work has appeared in a special edition of The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History focused on Latin American Cinema. She has essays forthcoming in Disrupted Boundaries: Consumer Culture in the U.S.-Mexico Border, ed. Alexis McCrossen (Duke University Press, forthcoming 2009) and Media Histories, edited by Janet Staiger and Sabine Hake (Routledge Press, forthcoming). Her research has been supported by the American Historical Association, the Instituto Nacional de Estudios sobre la Historia de la Revolucion Mexicana, the Fulbright-Garcia Robles Foundation, the Ford Foundation’s Diversity Fellowship program, and an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her dissertation, “’We’re Going Yankee’: American Films, Mexican Nationalism, Transnational Cinema, 1917-1935” was honored by the American Studies Association’s Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Prize and the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Dissertation Award.

For more information about Dr. Serna’s research and teaching please visit her website http://www.incinelandia.net.

				Department of History >> Faculty & Staff >> Faculty in Alphabetical Order >> Laura Isabel Serna
				Laura Isabel Serna Assistant Professor of History Laura Isabel Serna received her B.A. from the University of California Berkeley, her Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and Ph.D. (2006) from Harvard University. She is completing a book manuscript, Making Cinelandia: American Films and Mexican Film Culture before the Golden Age 1896-1936 (forthcoming, Duke University Press). Making Cinelandia examines how Mexican audiences, both in the Republic and in migrant communities in the United States, incorporated the films and film culture produced in the United States into Mexico’s postrevolutionary nation building project. She has begun a second project, tentatively titled Brownface, that explores the intersection of the U.S. film studios’ strategies for representing Mexico and Mexicans and the labor of Mexican migrants in those studios as the providers of low-wage labor as extras, stuntmen, seamstresses, and manual laborers. Other research interests include translation as a narrative strategy in silent and early sound cinema, the history of Spanish language television, transnational cultural history, and cinema-going’s relationship to consumer culture. Dr. Serna’s work has appeared in a special edition of The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History focused on Latin American Cinema. She has essays forthcoming in Disrupted Boundaries: Consumer Culture in the U.S.-Mexico Border, ed. Alexis McCrossen (Duke University Press, forthcoming 2009) and Media Histories, edited by Janet Staiger and Sabine Hake (Routledge Press, forthcoming). Her research has been supported by the American Historical Association, the Instituto Nacional de Estudios sobre la Historia de la Revolucion Mexicana, the Fulbright-Garcia Robles Foundation, the Ford Foundation’s Diversity Fellowship program, and an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her dissertation, “’We’re Going Yankee’: American Films, Mexican Nationalism, Transnational Cinema, 1917-1935” was honored by the American Studies Association’s Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Prize and the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Dissertation Award. For more information about Dr. Serna’s research and teaching please visit her website http://www.incinelandia.net.