Cary Peñate
Musicology - Assistant Teaching Professor
Cary Peñate is a film musicologist who specializes on depictions of Afro-Cuban dance music in cinema from Latin America and the United States, particularly on intersections between popular culture, politics, and commerce. She received her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in May 2021 and was awarded an ACLS Emerging Voices Fellowship for a postdoc at the University of California, Davis. Her dissertation, “Rum, Tobacco, Dance, and Music: The Cuban Mulata in Twentieth-Century Cinema of the Americas,” investigates representations of the Cuban mulata (a mixed-race woman of black, white, and sometimes indigenous heritage) in international cinematic productions from the mid-twentieth century.