Arlene C. Fernández

Arlene Fernández studies Black and Latine quotidian urban life in the Americas and their entanglements with the digital. She situates her work at the intersection of cultural studies, urban media studies, and critical ethnic studies.

Arlene Fernández is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication. She situates her work at the intersection of cultural studies, urban media studies, and critical ethnic studies, with an emphasis on Black and Latine quotidian urban life in the Americas and their entanglements with the digital. Her current research interrogates the ways in which narratives about urban spaces, ethno-racial and colonial politics, socioeconomic precarity, and urban technology collectively manifest in everyday encounters in Latine corner stores in the U.S. Fernández also explores archival memory, race, and place in digital spaces and their counter-narrative possibilities and limitations. Her work has received awards from the International Association for Media and Communication Research, the Urban Communication Foundation, and the National Communication Association. As a media-maker, with particular interests in photography and documentary film, she is committed to a multimodal ethnographic research praxis that can serve as a potential vehicle for public engagement and translation, and as an opportunity for cultural reimaginings that center those at the margins.

Fernández holds a Master of Social Work and B.A. in Urban Studies, both from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to Annenberg, she worked primarily in the nonprofit and higher education sectors, bringing nearly a decade of professional experience.