UCSD Communication

Eduardo Santana

Education:

University of California at San Diego (UCSD), La Jolla, CA. ABD; currently pursuing the completion of the Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Bodies of Tango: Bodies of tango: affect, semiosis and the formation of transnational communities of dancers”

Dissertation Committee: Brian Goldfarb (Chair), Lisa Cartwright, Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Patrick Anderson, Jody Blanco.

I hold a masters degree from the Teresa Long Lozano Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin (2003), and a Bachelors degree in Communication from the University of St. Thomas in Houston (2000). I started my undergraduate education at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where I majored in Journalism and Communication.

Research Interests:

In the context of the global exchange and consumption of cultural forms, my current research is focused on tango dancing with a particular emphasis on the transnational formation of tango communities, alongside the affects that impact the bodies of tango and the breakdowns, tensions and interruptions that generate and are generated by this dance.
I have conducted research in cities of the United States, Canada, France and in Buenos Aires, Argentina, investigating the assemblages that provide cohesiveness to Argentine tango dance, among them the competing discursive practices about its past and its lines of development, alongside with the assemblages that mark its current processes of territorialization and deterritorialization.
Among the different bodies examined we find the moving bodies of the tango dancers sharing an embrace contextualized by the music; the bodies of their fellow dancers and the spectators that watch them in the spaces in which they interact; the bodies operating at the level of the political economy in which the tango dancing takes place; the interaction of the body of tango dancing with the other “tango bodies”: the music, the lyrics, the visual culture, and the singing.
I have been working as a research assistant with professor Brian Goldfarb in his media exchange and public health education project “Global Tourette.” As described in the project’s web page (http://globaltourette.net/), “Global Tourette supports a number of activities that promote awareness, understanding, and exchange of knowledge about Tourette and related disorders. These include: documentary video production and exchange; animation and digital media workshops for children, adolescents and their families; and the creation of a web site that connects participants with each other, as well as professionals and researchers in psychiatry, neurology, social work, and education. Our goal is to promote broader understanding of how we live with Tourette in diverse cultural settings in the US, Argentina, and other international locations”.
I am also interested in the tradition of cultural journalism as a site of cultural critique as a genre practiced in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century. I have conducted research examining the relation between Spanish language journalism and the commodification of identity practices and subjective positions in the United States.

Languages

Spanish, Portuguese

Media Production:

Video:
“Bodies of tango: between the transcendental and the mundane”: 20 minute documentary on Argentine tango dancing, presented at the Ethnographic Film showcase at the University of California San Diego, March 16, 2005.

“Bodies of Tango”: 60 minute documentary on the transnational communities of tango dancing, presented at UCSD, February 29, 2008.

Conferences/

Presentations:

“Bodies of Tango: Traverse Dancing Between Affect and Semiosis,” presented at the Department of Communication UCSD, April 2007.

“Global Tango and Mass Culture.” Presentation to the class “Anthropology and Mass Culture” thought by Ariana Hernandez-Reguant, Communciation Department UCSD, November 17, 2006

“Global Tourette: Transnational Media by Young People with Tourette Disorder,” presented with Brian Goldfarb and Lisa Cartwright at the Society for Disability Studies meeting in Vancouver, Canada, June 6, 2006.

“Tango and the Boundaries of Legitimate Knowledge”, “Communication in the Wild” encounter, May 2006

“Video Flows as an Entry Point Towards the Politics of Exchange and Collaboration: Affect and Performance in the Bodies of Tango, a Localized Case Between the United States and Buenos Aires,” March 5, 2006 Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) Conference “Media and the Americas,” Vancouver, Canada

“Film as Dance: Movement and Music,” presented at the “Josephine Baker Film Symposium” of the African and African-American Studies Research Project of UCSD, February 17, 2006.

“Bodies of Tango,” presented at the UCLA Art|Sci center, with Brian Goldfarb’s Global Tourette,” October 25, 2005

“Intensities through Octavio Paz: Eroticism, Culture, and the Debate About Modernity,” with José Saúl Martínez at the XXIII ILASSA conference, University of Texas at Austin, 2003

“Consuming Identity: Latino Media and the Construction of Latino / Hispanic Discourse,” with José Saúl Martínez at the XXII ILASSA conference, University of Texas at Austin, 2002.

Work Experience:

2004-Currently UCSD San Diego, California
Teaching Assistant/Reader/Research Assistant

2002-2003-Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas Austin, Texas
Graduate Research Assistant

1999 - Currently EFE News Services Austin, Texas
Contributor/Reporter

1998 - 2001 La Voz de Houston Houston, Texas
Assistant Editor

1998 - 1997 El Día Houston, Texas
Head of the proof reading department

1997 - 1995 El Sol de México México City
Copy Editor, Editor of the Cultural Supplement, Columnist, Proofreader, Reporter

1994 Generación Magazine México City
Cultural Reporter