Thursday December 4, 2025 | 3:45PM-4:45PM

LBC 208 Korach

Presenters

• Vania Barraza (University of Memphis, co-editor), Female Agency in Films Made by Latin American Women.

A comprehensive look at agency among contemporary women filmmakers in Latin America, this book examines the shifting agency of women both in a directorial role and on the screen in Latin American films. The text also includes lesser-studied national film industries such as Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, and Paraguay

• Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz (University of California, Santa Cruz), “Recovering Mujerista Media Histories: Building the Latina Media Recovery Project”

While significant scholarship has explored the representation of Latinas in U.S. popular media—examining intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and nation (e.g., Isabel Molina-Guzmán, Angharad Valdivia, Mary Beltrán, Myra Mendible, Carmen Huaco-Nuzum)—far less attention has been given to the histories and aesthetic practices of U.S.-based Latina media makers behind the camera. Similarly, although Latin American women’s filmmaking has been the focus of rich analysis on gendered authorship, feminist aesthetics, and transnational circulation (e.g., Deborah Shaw, Dolores Tierney, Ana López, Catherine Benamou), media production by U.S. Latinas remains underexamined.
This presentation introduces the Latina Media Recovery Project (LMRP), a digital humanities initiative that seeks to recover the contributions of 20th and early 21st-century U.S.-based Latina media makers through an initial suite of public-facing tools, including a digital mediaography, annotated bibliography, timeline, and screenings. Grounded in a mujerista framework, LMRP is inspired by the work of queer Chicana filmmaker and theorist Osa Hidalgo de Riva, who articulated one of the earliest applications of mujerista philosophy to media—foregrounding lo cotidiano, rasquachismo, formal hybridity, and collective liberation.
Drawing on the legacy of Latinx media scholars like Hidalgo de la Riva, Ana López, Lillian Jiménez, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Chon Noriega, and Rosa Linda Fregoso, this talk reflects on how archival, digital, and community-based methods can recuperate overlooked narratives of U.S Latina media history. The project bridges hemispheric frameworks by connecting with Latin American women’s filmmaking and models anticolonial, feminista digital humanities scholarship that re-centers Latina media creators as theorists, artists, and cultural historians.