My first New York Times guest essay is headlined, "America's Increasingly Diverse Security State Is Changing Communities." The ways in which America’s prison culture and military commitments have transformed the nation's cultural and economic landscape—particularly among communities of color—is a subject I had been mulling over for a couple of months and finally put into op-ed form. Great to be able to launch it into the world in the most prestigious opinion forum there is!
Events
Cruelty as Citizenship
Order Cruelty as Citizenship from your local indie bookshop or directly from the University of Minnesota Press!
More than a decade before the election of Donald Trump, vitriolic and dehumanizing rhetoric against migrants was already part of the national conversation. Situating the contemporary debate on immigration within America’s history of indigenous dispossession, chattel slavery, the Mexican-American War, and Jim Crow, Cristina Beltrán reveals white supremacy to be white democracy—a participatory practice of racial violence, domination, and exclusion that gave white citizens the right to both wield and exceed the law. Still, Beltrán sees cause for hope in growing movements for migrant and racial justice.
The Trouble with Unity
- Order The Trouble with Unity from your local indie bookshop or directly from Oxford University Press! Over the past dozen years, much attention has been given to examining the growing political influence of Latinos in the United States in order to define the so-called "Latino vote." The existence of a coherent, pan-ethnic Latino political agenda is, as The Trouble with Unity shows, not only highly debatable but democratically unviable. Situated at the intersection of political theory and Latino studies, the book is a nuanced critique of civic Latinidad and the Latino electoral and protest politics that work to erase diversity and debate in favor of images of commonality. Cristina Beltrán looks at key moments in U.S. Latino political history through the lens of political, feminist, and cultural thought to provide a theoretically driven account of the many ways in which Latinos lay claim to the public realm. In its innovative approach to the realities of Latino protest politics, The Trouble with Unity advances both social-movement and democratic political theory.
02/28/2023
11/17/2022
10/09/2022
APSA award for 'Cruelty as Citizenship'!
Was an honor to have Cruelty as Citizenship named one of two recipients of the APSA Latino Caucus's 2020 Best Book Award, alongside Holding Fast: Resilience and Civic Engagement Among Latino Immigrants by James A. McCann and Michael Jones-Correa. (Thanks to Betina Cutaia Wilkinson for tweeting this photo, with Angela X. Ocampo.)
09/19/2022
Countering political misinformation aimed at Latinos
With Spanish-language activists targeting Latino voters in particular, manipulating communities with mis- and disinformation, Providence College professor Tony Affigne and I wrote an op-ed explaining the problem and offering some ideas for addressing it. This version of our essay was published in the Sunday, July 31, Providence Journal. (Click on the op-ed to read a larger version.)
10/14/2021
08/16/2021
08/03/2021
05/13/2021
05/06/2021
03/29/2021
About Cristina
- Cristina Beltrán, Ph.D., works at the intersection of Latinx politics and political theory. She is an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. From 2001 until 2011, she taught in the Political Science Department at Haverford College; in 2013–14, she was a resident member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and an advanced seminar member at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, N.M., in 2019.
Her work has appeared in Political Theory, the Du Bois Review, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Political Research Quarterly, and various edited volumes. She is currently the co-editor of Theory & Event, a peer-reviewed journal that publishes work by scholars working at the intersections of political theory, cultural theory, political economy, aesthetics, philosophy, and the arts. She is also an occasional guest on MSNBC.
Her new book, Cruelty as Citizenship: How Migrant Suffering Sustains White Democracy (University of Minnesota Press), explores the American right’s deep antipathy toward nonwhite migrants from Mexico and Latin America and examines why many in the Republican Party experience acts of cruelty against migrants as a form of democratic pleasure. Other book projects include The Right Kind of Difference: Aesthetics, Affect, and the Ideological Uncertainty of Race, a collection of essays that explores a variety of topics including Latino conservatism, and what it means to work ethically at the intersection of race and political theory.
Cristina and her husband, editor and writer Matthew Budman, live in New York City.