A great privilege last fall was the opportunity to visit Mérida’s Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán (UADY), as an invited guest, to speak about my book Serial Mexico: Storytelling Across Media, from Nationhood to Now. It was a particularly meaningful afternoon because of the great dialogue with students and faculty on the cultural legacies of serialized narrative in Mexico. I also had the honor of presenting the book in conversation with one of Mexico’s most respected voices in media and cultural studies: Dr. Maricruz Castro Ricalde, whose work spans literature, cinema, gender studies, and digital storytelling.
A prolific and widely respected scholar, Maricruz Castro Ricalde has built a career at the Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM), where she served as a professor and researcher for over three decades, in a trajectory that has blended rigorous research with public engagement earning both national and international honors.
Since 2018, Ricalde has co-led the Humanizing Deportation Initiative—an award-winning digital storytelling project that centers the voices of migrants through collaborations with UC Davis, Robert McKee Irwin and community shelters across Mexico. Her career models how intellectual work can simultaneously deepen our understanding of national cultures and intervene in urgent conversations about gender, migration, and memory.
Castro Ricalde’s generosity as a scholar and as a thinker shone throughout our exchange, which spanned everything from 1980s telenovelas to the transnational aesthetics of contemporary streaming. Speaking at UADY—an institution rooted in the cultural heart of Yucatán—and doing so with a luminary and role model was a profound reminder of the power of intellectual community, and the urgency of placing Mexican media at the center of our conversations about history, representation, and belonging.
Read more about this event here.
