This episode explores the history of futbol and its relevance for immigrant communities, rituals, and families. This episode has an interactive and audiovisual study guide available at www.melthestorydoc.com. In them, I also share personal photos (archives.) Additionally, this episode has interactive and audiovisual study guides available at www.melthestorydoc.com. In them, I also share personal photos (archives.), I reconsidered my fieldwork during my dissertation in 2014 and shared some of my favorite futbol (soccer) memories...especially the 2022 World Cup finale.

This episode highlights how sexual identity throughout the regions can (still) be criminalized, demonized, weaponized, and put you "at risk" of violence. I posit how popular culture illuminates queer lives and experiences, providing references. Also, I question the future of "inclusive" Spanish and consider how language can shape self and health. Study Guide available at www.melthestorydoc.com

This episode engages with the imagined "Real Latino Gang" to evoke how activism, art, and academia intersect when studying popular culture in the Americas. I reflect on the value of "looking back" in order to "move forward." and ask, "what type of activist do you want to be?"

This episode explores the concepts of truth and justice in a post-dictatorial society. Additionally, I focus on the value of performance studies for understanding and engaging with popular culture (art) that seeks to reconcile self, community, nation, and history. The relationship between youth, art, and resistance comes into focus through restorative justice practices and collective activism throughout the region, over and over again.

Study guide available on my website.

This episode discusses the history and legacies of the Dirty Wars in Chile and Argentina. Additionally, I discuss the counter-movements to the repression of the dictatorships as seen in New Song (Chile) and Rock Nacional (Argentina.) I highlight how racial and historical trauma provides a lens to understand the legacy of this era and how it shifted the dynamics between the US and the Americas because of Operation Condor. Please find the study guide for this episode and more at www.melthestorydoc.com/PopularCultureintheAmericas

This episode explores what makes Brazil unique but also similar to its neighbors. I discuss the racial history and politics concerning Samba and Afro-Brasilian rap. Additionally, I engage with two of the most influential thinkers in Latin America who greatly impacted my work, Augusto Boal (Theater of the Oppressed) and Paulo Freyre (Pedagogy of the Oppressed.) I reflect on these tools of liberation.

This episode explores popular culture, specifically telenovelas, and film, using the theory of "windows" and "mirrors." I explore some common thematic tropes (violence, romance, etc.) and consider the relationship between globalization and media when teaching about the world and each other,

This episode examines the “roles” prescribed to Latina women and the relationship of these roles to power, visibility, and the (social, political, and physical) body.

*This episode has an interactive study guide. Download Here