Bianet Castellanos

612-626-7266

American Studies 206 ScottH

Department Affiliations

Narrative

M. Bianet Castellanos is an anthropologist and a core faculty member in American Studies. Her research interests focus on indigenous communities in the Americas and their relationship to the modern nation-state and global capitalism. Her book, A Return to Servitude: Maya Migration and the Tourist Trade in Cancún (forthcoming with University of Minnesota Press), examines the foundational role indigenous people play in the development of tourism and transnational spaces in modern Mexico. In addition, she is working on a new project that examines indigenous lives across national boundaries, between Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula and Los Angeles, California. This project explores the way gender, class, and racial ideologies intersect to shape how "indigeneity" and "community" are imagined within immigrant communities and migration studies. Castellanos teaches courses on politics and popular culture, immigration, global cities, the U.S.-Mexico border, and transnationalism. In her freshman seminar last spring, her class created a wiki page about life on the U.S.-Mexico border. To access this page, see https://wiki.umn.edu/view/USMXborder

Specialties

indigenous communities and cultures
migration
anthropology of work
Chicana/o studies
Latin America
transnationalism
gender studies
consumption

Educational Background

Ph.D.: Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 2003.
M.A.: Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Women’s Studies Certificate: Programa Internacional de Estudios de la Mujer, Colegio de México, Mexico.
B.A.: Anthropology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

Publications

"Don Teo's Expulsion: Property Regimes, Moral Economies, and Ejido Reform": Castellanos, Bianet, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 14(2) , Forthcoming Nov 2009.
"Building Communities of Sentiment: Remittances and Emotions Among Maya Migrants": Castellanos, Bianet, Chicana/Latina Studies, 8(1/2) 140-171, 2009.
"Cancun and the campo: Indigenous Migration and Tourism Development in the Yucatan Peninsula": Castellanos, Bianet, Holiday in Mexico: Critical Reflections on Tourism and Tourist Encounters, Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Link
"Constructing the Family: Mexican Migrant Households, Marriage, and the State": Castellanos, Bianet, Latin American Perspectives, 35(1) 64-77, 2008.
Engendering Mexican Migration. Castellanos, Bianet, co-edited with Deborah Boehm, Latin American Perspectives, Author, 2008.
"Adolescent Migration to Cancún": Castellanos, Bianet, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 28(3) 1-27, 2007.
"Photography and the Philippines": Castellanos, Bianet, Imperial Imaginings: The Dean C. Worcester Photographic Collection of the Philippines, 1890-1913, ed. C. M. Sinopoli and L. Fogelin, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, 1999.

Awards

Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellow, 2008
University of Minnesota's Office of International Programs International Research Circle, “Comparative Indigeneities of the Americas", 2007
Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, 2006
UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2003 - 2005
American Association of University Women American Fellow, 2002
Visiting Joint Fellow, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies and Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California at San Diego, 2002
Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Scholar, 2000

Courses Taught

AMST 1905 - Freshman Seminar: Life on the U.S.-Mexico Border, https://wiki.umn.edu/view/USMXborder
AMST 3113W - Latinos in Global Cities (America's Diverse Cultures)
AMST 3113W - Boomtowns and Borderlands: Life on the U.S.-Mexico Border (America's Diverse Cultures)
AMST 3253W - American Popular Culture and Politics
AMST 8239 - Thinking Through Transnationalism (Gender, Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Sexuality in the United States)
AMST 8401 - Teaching Practicum in American Studies

Alternative Output Formats