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 explores the interconnected transatlantic, transpacific, and translocal movements of popular music through a focus on mixed-race Filipino American artists from the 1960s to the present including: Sugar Pie DeSanto, Joe Bataan, Bruno Mars, H.E.R., and Saweetie. Spanning genres such as blues, Latin soul, and hyphy, this project draws on archival research, critical biography, music analysis, performance observation, and interviews to examine how these artists creatively respond to evolving imperial constructs of genre, as well as geographic and racial authenticity. By tracing their geographic, racial, and sonic im/mobilities, I illustrate how these artists connect musical scenes in the San Francisco Bay Area, the United Kingdom, New York, Los Angeles, Hawaiʻi, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, revealing complex intimacies, solidarities, and slippages that force us to rethink and expand static understandings of 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 the Pop Conference — the longest running music writing and pop music studies conference. 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 leftist and progressive leaders, teams, organizations, and coalitions building power for working-class communities of color.

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