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2 books match the query 'Báez, Jillian M.'

cover of Quinceañeras: Latinidades and Girlhood in Popular Culture

Quinceañeras

Latinidades and Girlhood in Popular Culture

Edited by Jillian M. Báez, Diana Leon-Boys, and Angharad N. Valdivia

University of Illinois Press, 2026

From dramas to reality TV to advertising, quinceañeras are familiar across mainstream media in the United States. The celebration event for fifteen-year-old girls has evolved over time and today is immersed in gender politics and consumer culture while speaking to Latina/o/x assertions of culture, belonging, tradition, and assimilation.

Jillian M. Báez, Diana Leon-Boys, and Angharad N. Valdivia edit a collection that draws on the expanding field of girlhood studies to examine the increasing visibility of the event and the figure of the quinceañera herself in pop culture. The contributors focus on quinceañeras as a trope for English-language media’s treatment of Latina girlhoods and Latinx cultures but also examine how use of the quinceañera charts deepening openness and inclusivity within Latinx culture.

Timely and thought-provoking, Quinceañeras provides an interdisciplinary exploration of a celebration and its central figure within studies of Latina/o/x identity, race, class, gender, and sexuality.

Contributors: Sonya M. Alemán, Jillian M. Báez, Ariana A. Cano, Dolores Inés Casillas, Mari Castañeda, Michael Anthony DeAnda, Kelly Ferguson, Litzy Galarza, Rachel González-Martin, Jillian Hernandez, Karla Larrañaga, Diana Leon-Boys, Stephanie Melissa Pérez, Angharad N. Valdivia, and Claudia Evans-Zepeda
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cover of Spanish-Language Television: Cultural and Industrial Transformations

Spanish-Language Television

Cultural and Industrial Transformations

Manuel G. Avilés-Santiago and Jillian M. Báez

University of Texas Press, 2025

How Spanish-language television networks continue to thrive in a rapidly changing media landscape.

The US television industry has suffered blow after blow amid media convergence and the rise of streaming. Those legacy broadcasters that survive are much diminished and highly dependent on live programming—the last redoubt of old media. There is an exception, though: Spanish-language television is thriving.

Spanish-Language Television surveys the Latinx media landscape to better appreciate why Univision and Telemundo have flourished while others faltered. Manuel G. Avilés-Santiago and Jillian M. Báez show that the major Spanish-language networks are unusually flexible and open to innovation in hopes of reaching new demographics. Univision and Telemundo were early to streaming. To appeal to “billennial” audiences—bilingual millennials—who threatened to stray from TV, they rebuilt the telenovela, which now features social commentary, diverse characters, and genre crossovers. Today’s reality programs defy old norms of linguistic correctness, and the airwaves are becoming less hospitable to racism and sexism, resulting in rising ratings and ad revenues. The first book-length treatment of reception patterns in Latinx TV, Spanish-Language Television deepens our understanding of new media in a moment of transformation and possibility.

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