Elana Zilberg

Associate Professor of Communication
Associate Director, California Cultures in a Comparative Perspective

Faculty Affiliate: Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, Ethnic
Studies, Chicano/a and Latino/a Arts and Humanities, Critical Gender Studies

Education

Ph.D in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, Department of Anthropology (2002)

Research

Elana Zilberg's research interests lie at the borders of anthropology and cultural geography, and of Latino and Latin American Studies. Her current work on the policing and deportation of Salvadoran immigrant gang (affiliated, alleged and affected) youth and their reception in El Salvador, examines the production of transnational space and identity at the nexus of migration, violence and security. She also works on communication and consumption networks between immigrants in the US and their families in Latin America. She teaches courses on representation, consumption, violence, space and place, cultural poetics, globalization, neoliberalism, and ethnography.

Publications

Transnational Geographies of Violence: An Inter-American Encounter from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Forthcoming with Duke University Press 2009.

“"Inter-American Ethnography: Tracking Salvadoran Transnationality at the Borders of Latino and Latin American Studies” in Companion to Latino Studies Juan Flores and Renato Rosaldo, eds. Oxford: Blackwell (2007).

"Refugee Gang Youth: Zero Tolerance and the Security State in Contemporary US-Salvadoran Relations, in Youth, Law and Globalization, Sudhir Venkatesh and Ronald Kassimir, eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press (2007).

"Gangster in Guerilla Face: The Political Folklore of Doble Cara in Post-Civil War El Salvador,” in Anthropological Theory. Yael Navarro and Kay Warren, eds. (Vol. 7 No. 1, March 2007).

"Fools Banished from the Kingdom: Remapping Geographies of Gang Violence between the Americas (Los Angeles and San Salvador).” American Quarterly, Vol. 56, Number 3, 759-779 (Honorable Mention 2005 Constance Rourke Prize Committee of the American Studies Association (2004).

"A Troubled Corner: The Ruined and Rebuilt Environment of a Central American Barrio in Post-Rodney King Riot Los Angeles,” in City and Society IVX(2):31-55 (2002).

"Falling Down in El Norte: A Cultural Politics of the ReLatinization of Los Angeles,” in Wide Angle,Guest editors Jesse Lerner and Clark Arnwine,special issue on film, architecture and urban space, Vol. 20, no. 3, 182-209 (1999).