Dr. Bernadette Marie Calafell researches and teaches in the area of Culture and Communication. She is also the Director of Graduate Studies. She received her B.A. and M.A. in Communication Studies from Arizona State University and earned her Ph.D. in Communication Studies with an emphasis on Performance Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently the Past-Chair of the Latina/o Communication Studies Division and La Raza Caucus of the National Communication Association and on the editorial boards of Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Text and Performance Quarterly, Womens Studies in Communication, Communication and Critical Cultural Studies, and Western Journal of Communication.
Her research converges around issues of performance, rhetoric, and intersectionality, particularly within Chicana/o and Latina/o communities. Methodologically her work in centered in performative writing, performance ethnography, and critical rhetoric. Her work has been published Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Text and Performance Quarterly, The Communication Review, Cultural Studies ó Critical Methodologies, and Communication, Culture, and Critique. Her co-authored piece Reading Latina/o Images: Interrogating Americanos was given the 2004 Distinguished Scholarship Award by the International and Intercultural Division of the National Communication Association. She is also author of the book Latina/o Communication Studies: Theorizing Performance. Most recently, she co-edited a special issue of Text and Performance Quarterly on Latina/o Performativities with Dr. Shane Moreman of California State University, Fresno.
Mentoring is extremely important to Dr. Calafell as she takes great pride in the mentoring relationships she has had with undergraduates and graduate students at Syracuse University and the University of Denver. She has also written about mentoring in her essay, Mentoring and Love published in Cultural Studies ó Critical Methodologies.