Elaine Kathryn Andres is an educator, strategist, and interdisciplinary researcher.

My research, teaching, and life interests span popular music and performance studies, feminist cultural studies, comparative ethnic studies, Asian American studies, and popular cultures of U.S. empire. My first book project, Afro Filipino Latine Intimacies and the Political Economies of U.S. Popular Music moves beyond additive and comparative models of racial formation by emphasizing how geographic dimensions shape mutually constitutive processes of racialization under empire. Focusing on mixed-race Filipino American artists—including Sugar Pie DeSanto, Joe Bataan, Bruno Mars, H.E.R., and Saweetie—I theorize local sound cultures as sites of imperial intimacy where taxonomies of race, place, genre, and authenticity are contested. By constellating their sonic and geographic im/mobilities, I examine how these artists make audible the entanglements of transpacific, transatlantic, and translocal flows—revealing the slippages and contingencies between Black, Filipino, and Latine musical and political expression.

I have presented my research and facilitated workshops and roundtables at annual conferences of the American Studies Association and the Association for Asian American Studies, “Music of Asian America: History, Activism, and Collaborations” — a convening co-sponsored by the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival and the Music of Asian America Research Center, and at Pop Con . I have also delivered guest lectures and invited talks at University of California Irvine, University of Minnesota, and Spelman College.

I completed my Ph.D. in Culture & Theory with designated emphases in gender and sexuality studies, Asian American studies, and visual studies at the University of California, Irvine. I earned my B.A. in Rhetoric with Honors at the University of California, Berkeley. I am currently an American Council of Learned Societies Leading Edge Fellow, at Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, California. Outside of my fellowship, I teach in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Cal State University East Bay.

In my consulting practice, I draw on my experiences across higher education, policy advocacy, and grassroots organizations to support leaders, teams, organizations, and coalitions building power for working-class communities.

Learn More