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Laura Isabel Serna

 Los Angeles, California, United States
Associate Professor, Division of Cinema and Media Studies, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California

Biography

Laura Isabel Serna is Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies and History at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Making Cinelandia: American Films and Mexican Film Culture before the Golden Age (Duke 2014) Her research focuses race and media, and Latinx and Mexican film cultures.

Scholarly beginnings

A research idea

Envisioning possible futures in the field of communication and media studies

Learn more about Prof. Serna’s journey

Selected readings

“Atmosphere.: Mexican Extras and the Production of Race in Silent Hollywood,” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 63, no. 1 (fall 2023): [forthcoming].  

«Estudios Churubusco: A Transnational Studio for a National Industry, in In the Studio: Visual Creation and Its Material Environments, edited by Brian Jacobson (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2020)  

“Government Sponsored Film and latinidad: Voice of La Raza (1971),” in Race and Non-Theatrical Film, edited by Marsha Gordon and Allyson Nadia Field (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019) 

Making Cinelandia: American Films and Mexican Film Culture before the Golden Age (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014) 

“La venganza de Pancho Villa: Resistance and Repetition,” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 37, no. 2 (fall 2012): 11-42  

Watch Prof. Serna present “The Golden Age of Film Distribution? Struggles Between Capital and Labor in Mexico's mid-20th Century Film Industry” at the Center for Latinx Digital Media

Listen to Prof. Serna’s insights about her professional journey in El Café Latinx podcast