Elaine A. Peña is currently a Visiting Scholar in Social Anthropology with the University of Edinburgh. She holds a permanent position in the United States as an Associate Professor of American Studies with the George Washington University. Peña received her PhD in Performance Studies with Northwestern University and accepted postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Illinois and Yale University before joining GW. Peña’s research has appeared in e-misférica, American Quarterly, American Literary History, Material Religion, and The Drama Review. She is the author of Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe (University of California Press, 2011). She also edited and introduced Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s Ethno-Techno: Writings on Performance, Activism, and Pedagogy (Routledge, 2005). Her next book—The Festive Border, forthcoming with the University of Texas Press (fall 2020)—uses a dual emphasis on ritual and infrastructure to examine cross-border cooperation during times of crisis at the Port-of-Laredo (Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas Mexico and Laredo, Texas U.S.A.).
Our Interview with Elaine A. Peña