About

Mariana Sabino-Salazar researches Iberian and Latin American Romani literature and the Gypsy stereotype in literature, cinema, and media. She draws from subaltern history, decolonial and critical race theory, literary analysis, and gender studies. 

Sabino’s dissertation focuses on the literary femme fatale archetype found in Mexican and Brazilian cinema from 1950 to 1980. She analyzes the genealogy of Gypsy images and narratives with a focus on race, gender, and nationalism. She works with a corpus of more than forty films with Gypsy characters that range from ranchero musical comedies to pornography. Sabino’s dissertation is developed in mixed-methods of semi-structured interviews, historical archival work in Brazil and Mexico, and the close reading of plays, novels, and films. Her project has received generous support from the Fulbright Commission, the United States Department of Education, the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT), and the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin.