Martha Chew, Ph.D
In the summer of 2001, Martha was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship by The Mexico North Network Research. The post-doctoral residence took place in the Department of Chicano Studies at The Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é of Texas at El Paso with the supervision of Dr. Dennis Bixler-Márquez, who helped her immensely in carrying out a study on the way gendered patterns of domination are constructed, disguised, reinforced and disseminated in the official discourse of the neo-liberal state, particularly in regard to the killing of working class, brown young women in Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua.
Martha Chew is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Studies at St. Lawrence Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é where she teaches intercultural studies, cultural studies, popular culture, border studies, and, nationalism, citizenship and transnationalism. Chew completed her doctorate in intercultural communication in the Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Martha’s research interests have focused on cultural expressions of immigrants. Her dissertation entitled “Cultural memory and the Mexican diaspora in the United States: the role of the corridos about immigration and the shared aesthetics in their performance by conjuntos norteños” was awarded distinction in the Fall of 2001.
Chew’s dissertation explores the role of music in shaping cultural identity through the experience of listening to, dancing, and singing corridos. The framework used to analyze the role of corridos in the Mexican diaspora in the United States was a critical perspective based on cultural studies, post-colonial theory, Chicano studies, and cultural performance. Chew is in the process of transforming her dissertation into a book. She has also carried out research on the role of the Spanish language program (such as Sábado Gigante) in the standardization and homogenization of Spanish-speaking people as well as in the construction and reconstruction of Hispanic identity. Chew is currently working on other two main projects: (1) the Chinese-Mexican population in the Mexico/US border, and (2) the calls of the liberal state for the moral regulation and redomestication of working class women as a response to the construction of border women as transgressors of moral and social boundaries. The latter project possible thanks to the post-doctoral fellowship Chew received from the Mexico-North Research Network Incorporation Transnationalism Fellowship in the summer of 2002.
Chew completed “La Escuela Normal” at the Escuela Nacional de Maestros, México, D.F. with honors. She studied in the Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México, D.F. to be a guide for primary school students. From 1986 to 1992, she was a Spanish-as-a-second language instructor in Reading, England. Chew taught basic, intermediate and advanced level Spanish language courses mainly at The International Language Center and The Reading College of Technology, Reading, England. In 1992, Chew completed the City and Guilds of London Institute’s in Further and Adult Education Certificate in Reading, England.
Chew is an adjunct faculty at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez. Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Administración [Social Science and Management Institute] where she has taught the graduate course “Multiculturalism and Geopolitics.”
Chew was a fellow of the Smithsonian Institution in 2001. She was part of the Latino Graduate Training Seminar “Interpreting Latino Cultures: Research and Museum.” Granted by the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives (SCLI) the Inter-Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é Program for Latino Research (IUPLR) that took place in Washington, D.C.
In the academic year 2001-2002, Chew had a post-doc stay at the Chicano Studies Research Center, in the Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é of California at Los Angeles where she focused her research on Chicano Studies, Cultural Studies and Performance Studies. She worked on the paper “The Politics of Sexuality and Gender Performance in Fiestas Norteñas among Subaltern Mexican communities in the United States.”
Chew sees her current teaching and research efforts in academia as a bridge between her initial interests in intercultural communication, mass communication theory, and development communication and her later applied work on representation and diversity issues. In the classroom and in Martha’s research, she brings a broad perspective to work on culture and communication with a goal of co-creating a better world.
Publications
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Chew, M. Cramer, J.&Prieto, L. (2003). Sábado Gigante [Giant Saturday] and the cultural homogenization of Spanish-speaking people. In Lee Artz & Yahya R. Kamalipour (Eds). Globalization, Media hegemony and social Clas. SUNY Press. Global Media Studies Series.