Esteban del Rio, PhD

Media and cultural studies, audiences, ideology, qualitative methods

I study how informational and entertainment media construct human categories and set limits on the negotiation and contestation of unities and differences. My scholarship contributes primarily to U.S. Latino media studies, problematizing the cultural, economic, and political formation of Latinidad. Essays appear in peer-review outlets such as the Journal of Communication Inquiry, Communication Yearbook, The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Media, Participations: The International Journal of Audience Research, and Communication, Culture & Critique. New work appears in Beneath the Roar and Tumult: Promoting Radical Hospitality and Belonging in College Classrooms (2025), (Re)Booting Inequality: A Reader on Critical Media Studies Approaches to Film & TV (forthcoming from NYU Press), and the Routledge Companion to Latinx Journalism (forthcoming from Routledge). Current research explores journalism and publics and the Catholic cultural roots of communication theory.

My interests include audiences and authenticity; class and consumerism; and communication and cultural theory. These areas provide foci in my courses, which include Introduction to Media Studies (COMM 130), Communication Criticism (COMM 336), Media & Conflict (COMM 338), and Communication Integration Experience (COMM 492). I have also taught Film & Cultural Politics (COMM 432), International Media (COMM 380), and British Cultural Studies (480). Special topics courses (COMM 494) include Latina/o Moving Images, Acoustic Culture & Communication, and The Production of Consumption. I encourage students to raise critical questions about the constitutive role of communication in all social reality. In these discussions, communication is understood as the primary social process. My pedagogical goals include the development of solidarity and the realization of Jon Sobrino’s assertion that “everything - absolutely everything - turns on the exercise of mercy.” I teach study abroad courses in France periodically, covering contestation over migration, fascism, illiberalism, nationalism, and collective memory. My teaching awards include the designation of Professor of the Year by three graduating classes and Professor of the Year award from Student Support Services on four occasions. 

I have been involved with the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and Collegium, a faculty development program exploring the Catholic Intellectual Tradition at Catholic colleges across North America. I served two terms as Chair of the Collegium Board of Directors. I have been a mentor at Collegium’s annual summer Colloquy on Faith and Intellectual Life on several occasions and have been awarded the Thomas M. Landy Award for Distinguished Serve to Collegium during the 2022 Summer Colloquy. I am interested in how Catholic colleges and universities can foster a rigorous, authentic, and free sense of inquiry and wonder across disciplines and serve as an antidote to the optics-oriented, instrumentalist approach to learning found too often in assumptions guiding higher education.