Faculty
Mónica F. Torres
Associate Professor and Department Head
Email:
mftorres@nmsu.edu
Office Address:
New Mexico State University
Department of English
P.O. Box 30001, MSC 3E
Las Cruces, NM 88003
Phone:
(505) 646-2319
Fax:
(505) 646-7725
Biographical Statement
- Ph.D. American Studies (emphasis in Cultural Studies), University of New Mexico, 2002
- M.A. English (emphasis in Rhetoric and the Teaching of Writing), New Mexico State University,1984
- B.A. English, New Mexico State University, 1982
I returned to graduate study in 1995 after a decade-long career as a community college administrator. I joined the English Department at New Mexico State University in the fall of 2002
Research and Teaching Interests
Questions of learning and knowing have interested me for a long time. As a cultural studies scholar, I think about the social and institutional structures in which learning is embedded. In what ways do cultural values and assumptions influence the production of knowledge? In what ways do institutional policies and procedures shape curricula or pedagogies? What are some of the relationships between the knowledge systems in which we are embedded and the daily, material lives we live? As a teacher, I want to create environments in which students can productively wrestle with the conditions of learning, can mediate between external information and networks and internal frameworks and processes. These are the questions that guide my work.
More specifically, I study the practices and processes by which knowledge of culture/cultural identity is shaped in/through/by institutional discourse. I am particularly interested in the cultural constructions of identity as represented in documentary film, museum exhibits, ethnographic texts, educational textbooks, and other discursive formations that purport to say something meaningful about culture(s).
I am also interested in the ways in which identity functions in institutions of higher education, particularly in the Southwestern United States. Research suggests that there are social and cognitive advantages for students who live and work, play and study, in diverse environments. In what ways do institutions support students to benefit from the diversity on their campuses and in their communities?
In addition, I engage cultural theories and practices that explore liminality, including borderlands theory, queer theory, and cyber theory. My primary consideration here is epistemological: In these spaces between, how do we know?
Departmental Projects
- Director of Graduate Studies
- Essay Editor for Puerto del Sol
Courses Commonly Taught
- ENGL 511: Theories of Discourse (Identity and the Problem of Language)
- ENGL 549/649: Documentary Film Theory and Criticism
- ENGL 555: Rhetoric of Science
- ENGL 568/668: Rhetoric and Cultural Studies
Selected Publications/ Work in Progress
“‘Doing Mestizaje’: When Epistemology Becomes Ethics.” Entremundos: Creative and Critical Perspectives on Gloria Anzaldúa, ed. Ana Louise Keating.
“Exorcizing/Exercising Treachery: Robust Subjectivity in Lourdes Portillo’s The Devil Never Sleeps," (in press, The Velvet Light Trap).
“Words that Matter: Institutional Discourse, "Injurious Hails," and Trinh T. Minh-ha's Reassemblage (in progress).
“Body Trouble: Bodies (of Knowledge) in the Documentary Films of Marlon Riggs,” (in progress).
“Difference Matters: Rescuing ‘Diversity’ for the Classroom, (with Kathryn Valentine, in progress).
“‘Democracy’s College’: The Rhetoric of Mission in the U.S. Community College Movement,” (with Mary Prentice, in progress).