San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
MY ‘SELENA’ STUDENTS FEEL AS I DID LONG AGO: SEEN
It’s difficult to fathom that the Queen of Tejano, Selena Quintanilla-pérez, has been gone for 27 years. It’s even more difficult to fathom that there still isn’t a Latinx star of her caliber to fill her shoes. That’s a controversial statement, I’m sure, but one that I wholeheartedly believe. Selena was talented, charismatic, and, above all, unapologetically herself. A pocha from Texas, Selena spoke broken Spanish and fused R&B and pop with the traditional sounds of Tejano. She pushed the boundaries of fashion and music and occupied a third space that was “ni de aquí, ni de allá” (not from here nor from there). Selena straddled two cultures and two languages and embodied what it was to live in the borderlands — something that resonated with many Mexican Americans, including myself.
When I was growing up, I never had positive Latinx representations in the media. There were not many Brown people in films, television and music in the United States, much less any who were also gay. Those few individuals who were in the media were often stereotyped and depicted as one dimensional. For me, Selena served as a cultural template to help form my own identity. She showed me that there was not one correct way to be Mexican American and Latinx. She made me feel more comfortable being a Brown, queer, first-generation pocho living in the borderlands of Texas.
Flash forward to August 2016 when I moved to San Diego and began teaching at San Diego State University, a Hispanic-serving institution, in the School of Journalism and Media Studies. I quickly recognized that students felt the same way I had so many years ago. They were searching for ways to understand their own identities and analyze the Latinx celebrities they saw in U.S. pop culture. The students needed more engagement with representations (including absence of representation and misrepresentation) of Latinx populations and content in media landscapes to better understand the relationship between mediated representations and Latinx identity formation and maintenance.
So, I created a course for them with Selena as the cultural bridge between their academic studies and the professional world of media, where many of them would one day be working. The use of a celebrity like Selena as a cultural anchor allows students to utilize both pop culture and Latinx culture to deconstruct and interrogate the significance and broader meaning of underrepresented identities. The SDSU course “Selena & Latinx Media Representation” provides students the opportunity to explore and deconstruct the sociocultural representations of intersectional Latinx identities by analyzing the music, career and inf luence of Selena. She is the perfect link for students to analyze the past, present and future landscape of Latinx pop culture, politics, economics and identities.
The Selena course first ran as a special topics course in spring 2020 and was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Like the rest of the educational world, we migrated to virtual lectures and students continued their studies online. Since then, the course has been made permanent, and it is being offered this spring to students in a face-to-face setting using SDSU’S Learning Research Studios. In these state-of-the-art classrooms, students are grouped together with various technologies where they can research and collaborate in real-time. The course integrates lectures with in-class activities where students critically analyze and discuss class topics such as film, streaming media, the U.S. census, Latinx advertising, drag queens, art, digital marketplaces, small businesses and various facets of culture.
One of the new additions to the course this semester is an ethnographic project where students get to venture out into the borderlands of San Diego County and partake in the various celebrations that surround Selena’s birthday on April 16. Students are encouraged to attend art shows, Selena drag shows, Walk the Block in Barrio Logan, and the launch of Como la Cerveza West Coast IPA at Mujeres Brew House, among others. Through the Selena course, students are learning about much more than just Selena and media. They are getting in touch with the community and Latinx culture, all while using Selena as a cultural anchor and pop culture lens.
Selena was, and continues to be, emblematic of the f luid and multidimensional nature of the Latinx community. She transcends borders, languages, genres and generations! The course on her legacy and Latinx media representation is a permanent part of the curriculum at SDSU and will continue to provide a space for students to learn about themselves, their cultural identities and the effects of media on traditionally underrepresented identities.