Desirée Martín

PhD, Duke University; BA UC Berkeley

Desirée A. Martín is a scholar of Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x studies, with further interests in media studies, c20/21 American studies, and US-Mexico border studies. She is the author of Borderlands Saints: Secular Sanctity in Chicano/a and Mexican Culture (Rutgers, 2013) and has published both critical essays and hybrid creative-critical pieces. Her current book project, Fake Chicanx: Identity, Authenticity, and Refusal, explores the idea that it is counterproductive and ultimately impossible to identify a unified, cohesive Chicanx identity. It argues that the range of conversations, practices and feelings that people use to refuse or challenge representations of "authentic" Chicanx identities are, in fact, the very things that constitute the continually evolving and complex identities of Chicanx people.   
 

Publications:

Book:

      "Borderlands Saints: Secular Sanctity in Chicano/a and Mexican Culture." Dec 2013, Rutgers University Press. https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/borderlands-saints/9780813562339

Articles, Book Chapters and Other Media:

• "Saints," in The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Popular Culture. (Frederick Luis Aldama, Ed.). London & NY: Routledge. Forthcoming 2016. 
• Voice-over commentary for short film "Mexican Filibusters: An Incident in the Recent Uprising" (1911), Treasures from American Film Archives, Vol. 5. DVD. 2012.
• "Possessing La Santa de Cabora: The Union of Sacred, Human and Transnational Identities" in Crisscrossing Borders in Literature of the American West. (R. Dyck & C. Reutter, Eds.). Palgrave MacMillan. 2009.
• "Multiculturalismo," in Diccionario de Estudios Culturales Latinoamericanos,  (Robert McKee Irwin & Mónica Szurmuk, Eds.). México, DF: Siglo XXI/Editorial Instituto Mora. 2009.
• “'Multilingual Aesthetics and the Limits of Chicano/a Identity in Margarita Cota-Cárdenas’ Puppet,” MELUS, 33, Issue 3 (Fall 2008).
• "'Excuse the inconvenience, but this is a revolution': Zapatista Paradox and the Rhetoric of Tourism," South Central Review 21:3 (Fall 2004) Special Issue: Memory and Nation in Contemporary Mexico, 107-128.

Awards and Honors:

• Outstanding Book Award for "Borderlands Saints", LASA Latino/a Studies Section, 2014.
• Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (2001-2002)
• Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship (1997)

Email:  dmartín@ucdavis.edu