Writing

I am currently doing scholarly writing on Digital Rhetoric, New Media, Cyberculture, Human Mobility, Return Migration to Mexico, U.S.-Mexico borders, and Digital Public Humanities for Social justice. I am also experimenting with creative Cyborg and Electronic writing. You will see my creative works here soon.

Edited Book

Digital Culture and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Rhetorics on Human Mobility

Rocha de Luna, Rubria & Castro Ricalde, Maricruz (Editors).

Routledge. 2024.

The advent of digital media has led to significant global changes and reshaped geopolitical borders, impacting human mobility in both positive and negative ways. On the positive side, rapid communication has brought transnational families closer, and access to more resources online can be beneficial for migrants. However, digital media can also be used to control and reinforce borders. In the U.S.-Mexico border, digital technology is employed by the State to establish a system of political control that perpetuates stereotypes about the migrant population. Digital media provides a more democratic mode of communication that enables the migrant community to present their discourse, experiences, history, and memories in a way that challenges, deconstructs, and creates an authentic narrative.

Digital culture and rhetoric examine these new forms of expression in which identification, memory, representation, persuasion, and meaning-making are created, experienced, and circulated through digital technologies. Through this lens, the book "Digital Culture and U.S.-Mexico Border: Rhetorics on Human Mobility" explores the borders through digital artifacts, creating a digital border dimension. This digital border functions as a frontier mediated by technology in geographical, physical, sensory, visual, discursive, and imaginary realms. The book deconstructs digital artifacts such as digital press, social media, digital archives, web platforms, technological and artistic creations, visual arts, video games, and artificial intelligence, helping us understand the anti-immigrant and dehumanizing discourse of control. It also examines the ways in which migrants create vernacular narratives as digital activism to challenge the stereotypes that affect them.

Book Chapters

Introduction

Rocha de Luna, Rubria.

In Digital Culture and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Rhetorics on Human Mobility (2024),

In the introduction to the book "Digital Culture and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Rhetorics on Human Mobility," I discuss how digital technology has both positive and negative effects on human mobility across the U.S.-Mexico border. I explain how digital technology has transcended traditional boundaries in communication, commerce, and knowledge exchange while also highlighting its role in enforcing and controlling borders, both physical and conceptual. Additionally, I outline the digital culture and digital rhetoric approach used to analyze the U.S.-Mexico digital border, as well as how digital media shapes the narrative surrounding borders and migrants. I argue that the vernacular narrative, aided by digital media and technology, can combat anti-immigrant sentiment and challenge stereotypical representations of the border. Throughout my discussion, I reference the works of prominent scholars in border and migration studies, digital culture, digital rhetoric, and digital humanities.

Rhetoric of Empathy: Digital Storytelling Co.Creators Seeking to Humanize Migration and Deportation

Castro Ricalde, Maricruz & Rocha de Luna, Rubria

In Digital Culture and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Rhetorics on Human Mobility (2024).

In this chapter, we analyze the role of facilitators in the production and post-production process of the digital narratives of the Humanizing Deportation digital archive. This archive consists, to date, of 368 digital narratives in the form of testimonial short films. For this study, we perform computer-assisted text analysis of the facilitators’ narrative synopses. This manuscript teaches how video synopses and thumbnail images function as digital rhetoric strategies to build empathy toward migration. Likewise, we confirm the power of the participatory audiovisual genre as a pedagogical and informative tool on migration and deportation themes.

Peer-Review Articles

El caso de United Fronteras: Computación mínima para desafiar fronteras en las humanidades digitales poscoloniales

Fernández, Sylvia, Rocha de Luna, Rubria, and Zapata, Annette.

Digital Humanities Quarterly, vol.16, no. 2, 2022.

In 2019, the project United Fronteras began to counter the official or hegemonic representation of the Mexico-United States border in the digital cultural record and to inspire the questioning and critical development of materials or projects that utilize digital technologies to represent the border from various perspectives. This article touches on the process of how UF creates a transborder model of work between academics from different humanities disciplines and members of the community outside of academia to make use of postcolonial digital humanities and minimal computing practices and methodologies to generate a third digital space that demonstrates the diversity of (hi)stories from the border and to document the public memory of the materials and projects in this region. Additionally, the article suggests the use of minimal computing as a fundamental part of independent and autonomous projects that dedicate themselves to resisting the structures of power and physical and digital vigilance in border regions because of its ability to provide autonomy, independence, accessibility, functionality, security, neutrality, and material stability across borders.

Humanidades públicas digitales: Construyendo una comunidad digital solidaria en Redes, migrantes sin fronteras

Rocha de Luna, Rubria and Zavala García, Alicia

Hispania, vol. 104 no. 4, 2021, p. 691-703.

In recent decades, US immigration policy has become more intolerant. Due to this situation, hundreds of migrants have been deported, separated, and imprisoned. However, along with the increase in migrant violence, pro-migrant humanitarian groups have also increased. This article analyzes the case of Redes, migrants without borders. Redes is an initiative that seeksIn recent years, the US immigration policy has become increasingly intolerant. This has led to the deportation, separation, and imprisonment of hundreds of migrants. However, amidst the rise in migrant violence, there has also been a surge in pro-migrant humanitarian groups. This article analyzes the case of Redes, migrants without borders. Redes is an initiative to create a digital community of solidarity between migrants and the organizations that support them. To examine the Redes platform, researchers have used digital public humanities and postcolonial digital humanities as these allow the study of the structures of government domination and control from different critical perspectives. The Redes platform is a third meeting space where pro-migrant associations and initiatives use vernacular rhetoric to counter the dominant rhetoric of power in social networks and other public spaces to build a digital community of solidarity between migrants and the associations that help them. To examine the Redes site, digital public humanities, and postcolonial digital humanities have been used as they allow the study of the structures of government domination and control from different critical perspectives. The Networks platform is a third meeting space in which pro-migrant associations and initiatives use vernacular rhetoric to oppose the rhetoric of power that dominates social networks and other public spaces.

La iniciación en el conocimiento de la sexualidad como elemento de conflicto en las experiencias de Ana en Cría Cuervos

Rocha de Luna, Rubria

Language and Literature Journal. 7. 1 (2012)

Sigmund Freud addressed the psychological conflict that arises in childhood upon learning about sexuality in his work "On the Sexual Theories of Children" (1906). Carlos Saura's film "Cría cuervos" (1976) analyzes this conflict through the experiences of Ana, the protagonist. The movie is based on the idea that children develop fantastical theories about their parents' sexuality, conception, and pregnancy. Ana's ideas are formed from what she observes and hears around her as a child, which she tries to make sense of as an adult.