"Hispanic or Cuban/ Mexican/ Colombian/etc.? Doing Culture in South Florida"

Mahler teaches in FIU’s interdisciplinary social science department – Global & Sociocultural Studies. For most of her career, her research and publications have focused on Latin American and Caribbean migration to the United States and the development of transnational ties between migrants and their home communities. She and colleagues pioneered bringing gender into this transnational perspective. In recent years, she has returned to an early inquietude about enculturation, addressing the “nature” of culture by emphasizing how young children acquire culture and how this understanding can and should dramatically impact how we study and also do culture. To pursue this passion she read widely and “undisciplinely” compiling a wide array of knowledge and perspectives into a reader-friendly format in her newest book Culture as Comfort (2013) and its companion website: cultureascomfort.com. Most recently she and collaborators are analyzing results from research regarding intra-Hispanic diversity and why it is so understudied in both South Florida and the U.S. as a whole.