Elaine Andres, Ph.D.

Elaine Kathryn Andres is an interdisciplinary researcher, educator, and practitioner whose work focuses on political economies of music, media, and performance within the U.S. transpacific empire. Her current project examines touring performances of Filipinx American musicians to theorize geographic, stylistic, and racial im/mobilities as intertwined conditions of musical labor. Constellating musical transits, the work unfolds how histories of empire and militarization structure movement between racial, geographic, and musical worlds and shape Filipinx American relationalities with Black and Latine communities and sound cultures. Her writing is published or forthcoming in Sexe, Race, et Colonies, the Journal of Asian American Studies, PBS American Experience, the SAGE Encyclopedia for Filipina/x/o American Studies, and Alon: Journal for Filipinx American and Diasporic Studies.

Alongside her scholarship, Andres has organized publicly engaged initiatives with organizations including the Music of Asian America Research Center and Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Atlanta. She is also a member of reimagine collective, where she provides research, narrative strategy, and communications support to organizations, coalitions, and campaigns committed to building power for working-class people of color.

Prior to SDSU, Andres was a postdoctoral fellow in Asian American studies at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading edge fellow at Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, CA — a public humanities postdoctoral appointment funded by the American Council of Learned Societies. She earned her Ph.D. in culture and theory at UC Irvine with emphases in Asian American studies, gender and sexuality, and visual culture, and her B.A. in rhetoric with honors from UC Berkeley.

Born and raised in the Inland Empire by working-class Filipinx immigrants, Andres is excited to work with students who bring their own experiences of Southern California to the classroom.