CV

Katia Perea, Ph.D.
 
Education
5/11 Ph.D. Sociology/Media Studies,  New School For Social Research, NYC
Social Theory and Media Applications.
 
5/99 MA in Sociology,  New School For Social Research, NYC
Sociology of Culture, Urban Sociology and Ethnographic Methods
 
5/91 BA Liberal Studies,  Loyola University,  New Orleans, LA
Communications/Liberal Studies
 
Academic Teaching Experience
June 2004 – Present, CUNY – Kingsborough
Associate Professor of Sociology – Intro to Sociology (2015 Spring Syllabus), Sociology of Gender, Minorities in the US, Introduction to Research Methods – these classes focused on the constructs of race, class and gender, help the students frame the social construction within their own lives.  There is a heavy focus placed on writing and an IRB approved, year-long ethnographic field research assignment is given in the Introduction to Research Methods course with continuous guidance on note taking and research development.
 
March 2004 – May 2007, CUNY – LaGuardia
Sociology Faculty  – Intro to Sociology Bilingual, Intro to Sociology ESL- both are taught in English and Spanish with extensive attention on students’ understanding of the terms used to describe various social theories. Urban Sociology – focus on historical urban theorist such as Durkheim, Weber, Chicago School and New York theorist such as Jane Jacobs. We relate theories to contemporary NYC urban living.  Politics of Sexuality – as part of the Urban studies division at CUNY-LaGuardia, this class focuses on the role sexuality has in the urban setting, relating it to race, class, and gender.  Students do field research assignments at related sites.  This writing-intensive class is part of a cluster thematically combined with English and History.
 
August 2003 – May 2004, Boricua College, New York, NY
Adjunct Sociology Faculty  – Sociology I and Sociology II   Class size of forty plus predominately ESL adult students.  Class conducted mostly in Spanish.
 
August 2003 – May 2004, Mount Saint Vincent College, New York, NY
Adjunct Sociology Faculty  – Intro to Sociology – two sections of twenty plus sophomore students three times a week.  Present and moderate a panel discussion for students on gender and race.  Organize students to conduct group ethnographic field studies and give class presentations.
 
September 1998 – December 1998, New School for Social Research, New York, NY
Teacher’s Assistant/Parsons School of Design – Liberal Studies dept.  Edited undergraduate student fiction to compose an organic novel for Dr. Terry Williams, Graduate Faculty Sociology Dept.  Coordinated student field research into Spanish speaking urban communities of Harlem.
 
Education and Research Experience
January 2002 – June 2003, People Using Media to do Prevention, PUMP, FRoSTD, New York, NY
 Senior Educator/Production Coordinator   Under the Foundation for Research on Sexually Transmitted Diseases developed bilingual HIV prevention curriculum and ran education groups for select target populations; undocumented Mexicans, Bronx teenage girls, Churches of Coney Island, sex workers, Teatro El Puente, etc.  Trained groups in video production and assisted editing their prevention education video for their target community.
 
May 2001- August 2001, GMHC, New York, NY
Intake and Assessment Conducted bilingual Intakes and Assessments at GMHC matching new HIV+ clients with services available at the institution, such as housing, food services, counseling, and harm reduction drug treatment.  Offered safe sex workshops in Spanish at Latina Health Forum for HIV+ women.
 
May 2000 – December 2000, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Video Education Director    Provided weekly iMovie video classes for 15 students ages 12 to 17.  Trained students in use of camera, lighting and sound equipment, interview techniques and script writing skills.  Edited footage to create documentaries for the museum.
 
May 1999 – August 1999, New School for Social Research, Grant from George Sorros Foundation “The Open Society”, New York, NY
Ethnographer  Conducted extensive interviews with Goth teenagers over the nature of death within the Goth community as part of the “Project on Death in America” research project.  Interviews were transcribed and comprehensively organized for grant publication.
 
January 1998 – May 1998, Rikers Island Women’s Prison
Activities Facilitator   Acted as translator and advocate for the inmates in the ward.  Facilitated communication among inmates to develop needed discussions on the inherent tensions of prison life.  Lead discussion groups around selected readings and films shown in the ward.  Conducted ethnographic reports on the inmates’ personal adjustment to prison life.
 
January 1996 – December 1998, Harlem Writers Crew, New York, NY
Asst. Educational Director  Developed zines and comic books, counseling, computer instruction, writing skills development, and overall literacy awareness for 10 students ages 12 to 18 under the direction of Dr. Terry Williams.
 
 
Publications and Presentations
 

Touching Queerness in Disney Films Dumbo and Lilo & Stitch

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/7/11/225

Disney’s influence as a cultural purveyor is difficult to overstate. From cinema screen to television programming, vacation theme parks to wardrobe, toys and books, Disney’s consistent ability to entertain children as well as adults has made it a mainstay of popular culture. This research will look at two Disney films, Dumbo (1941)1 and Lilo & Stitch (2002),2 both from distinctly different eras, and analyze the similarities in artistic styling, studio financial climate, and their narrative representation of otherness as it relates to Queer identity.

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Girl Cartoons and the Role of Women as Television Executives in the 1990s, October 10th, 2017This article discusses the influence of the women purveyors who have been instrumental in the development of US television cartoons. It focuses on the US 1990s digital era upon which the massification of the medium of television through cable and global satellite distribution coincided with women’s entry into television executive positions. This era is commonly referred to in the US as the Cartoon Renaissance. The combination of women executives and cable television distribution brought about the proliferation of new cartoon programs and consequently television girl cartoons’ second wave (Perea 2015). While a small body of existing literature explores the role of Nickelodeon in children’s programming and women’s position as animation industry decision-makers (Hendershot 2004, Banet-Weiser 2007), there has yet to be an analysis that includes Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, PBS, FOX, Warner Bros. and the interchangeable women between them, as well as the new parameters of girl cartoon programming that came about under their leadership.

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Girl Cartoons, Bronies, & the Princess ParadoxAmherst College Office of Student Activities & the Women’s & Gender Center, April 20th, 2017

The Bronies, Disney’s master narrative, and the princess paradox will be explored in Professor Perea’s discussion on the genre of Girl Cartoons while exploring how gender normative coding is playfully transgressed from within mainstream media.

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Girl Cartoons Second Wave: Transforming the GenreAnimation: an interdisciplinary journal (SAGE),  November 2015 vol. 10 no. 3 189-204

The US girl cartoon genre began in the 1980s with the Federal Communication Commission’s deregulation of television, allowing the programming of toy-based cartoons. The toy industry’s gender binary of girl toys vs boy toys was translated into the definitive split of girl cartoons and boy cartoons. This first wave of girl cartoons defined the gender normative parameters that would identifiably label a cartoon program as a girl cartoon: rainbow unicorns and star sparkles in friendship communities with motivational girl leaders that displayed confidence, determination and savvy while processing emotions and solving conflicts through communication. These characters were young girls, not teenagers or young adults with developed bodies. It is rarely addressed that these cartoon characters presented an empowered girl media product in popular culture a decade before the nomenclature ‘Girl Power’, and did so sans sexualization. In this article, the author discusses the second wave of girl cartoons that came about with US television’s cartoon renaissance in the 1990s. This research explores the ways that lead girl characters were newly portrayed and how they evolved from the girl cartoon representations in the first wave era. Along with the representation of empowered girl characters, this research identified a feminine triptych. In character settings with more than one girl lead, the feminine portrayals were represented in the triptych of the beauty, the brains and the brawns. This research also revealed a persistent glitch to the empowerment of girl cartoon protagonists in the form of secondary characters, identified as mean girls and misogyny boys or no-homo boys. Another shortcoming is identified as boobs and boyfriends, to demonstrate the compulsion to give characters above the age of 12 sexualized bodies and heteronormative relationships. Several cartoon episodes of The Powerpuff Girls, Maggie and the Ferocious Beast, Dora the Explorer, Ni Hao- Kai Lan, Franny’s Feet, Lilo and Stitch: The Series, Maya & Miguel, Word Girl and Mighty B! are textually analyzed to document both verbal and visual gender cues.

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“The Power Girls Before Girl Power: 1980s Toy-Based Girl Cartoons” February 2015
 
“Girl Cartoons: A Playful Transgression on Popular Cultures ”
 Panel discussion presented at Bronycon Conference on August 4, 2013, Baltimore, MD.  Presentation discussed the way popular media, specifically television girl cartoons, have created cultural signifiers defining girl gender and the instances that these gender identities are transgressed.
 
“Queering the Comic”
 Panel discussion presented at Comikaze Conference in September 2012, Los Angeles, USA.  Panel discussed the variable identities available for popular media consumption that can be referenced when expanding on the role media has in formulating normative social coding.
 
“Challenging the Visual Social World of Girls in US American Television Cartoons”
 Paper presented at the International Visual Sociological Conference  in July 2012, New York, USA. Paper explored the role of a popular culture media as a tool by which normative gender coding can be playfully transgressed.
 
“Sex vs. Gender – A Discussion on the Social Construction of Gender”  presented at New York University Social Work School, MSW Candidates Fall 2003
 
“Boyish Girl or Girlish Boy – Explaining Gender” presented at Laguardia College, Long Island City  Fall 2002
 
“Black Beans and MTV” Chapter in  Cotman, J and Eloise Linger Ed.,  Cuban Transitions at the Millennium. International Development Options: Largo, MD. 2000
 
“Getting the Methods Groove – How to Enjoy the Ethnographic Process” paper presented at the Southern Sociological Conference   October 2000
 
Video Productions
Museum of Modern Art
“Generations” –Second Camera on Barbera Hammer and Gina Carducci’s 16mm film about mentoring and passing on the tradition of personal experimental filmmaking. Barbara Hammer, 70 years old, hands the camera to Gina Carducci, a young queer filmmaker. Shooting during the last days of Astroland at Coney Island, New York, the filmmakers find that the inevitable fact of aging echoes in the architecture of the amusement park and in the emulsion of the film medium itself.
 
PUMP, Manhattan Neighborhood Network
“Girltalk” – Facilitated panel discussion on issues facing young women; in collaboration with Foundation for Research on Sexually Transmited Diseases- Prevention Videos for Target Communities, Manhattan Neighborhood Network and Bronx Adolescent Initiative Program.
 
Asociacion Tepeyak
“Juntos Por Una Causa” – Presented different negotiation scenarios in Spanish language that addressed the needs of the undocumented Mexican Community.
“Church Project” – Facilitated church youth discussing how church teachings apply to the treatment of those that are HIV+ in their community; in collaboration with the United Churches of Coney Island.
 
Certification
CUNY – Writing In the Discipline, WID   Spring 2006.
CUNY – Writing Across the Curriculum, WAC, Spring 2010.
 
Languages
Verbal and written fluency in English and Spanish.
 
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