In the 1920s Mexican journalists referred to Hollywood and U.S. film culture more generally as Cinelandia. I have adopted this term to refer to the way that audiences marked by history, language, and complicated political and cutlural relationships to the United States translated, negotiated, and appropriated U.S. films and film culture to create a distinct cultural space inflected by the preoccupations of postrevolutionary nation building.

My primary scholarly interests lie in historical reception studies. My research focuses on audiences in Mexico and Mexican migrant communities in the United States and the meanings they created out of their encounters with American film and film culture. Other research interests include silent cinema exhibition, the history of cultural exchange between the United States and Mexico, the history of consumer culture and commodified leisure in the Americas, race and ethnicity in film, and questions of translation, both in terms of film and film culture and more broadly construed.

Please click on the links above and to the left for more information about my research, teaching, and other interests.

Contact Me:

sernali@post.harvard.edu