Lecture: What’s Love Got to Do with It? White Desire, Country Music, and Cross-Border Love”

Lee Bebout, Ph.D., associate professor of English at Arizona State University, will visit Saint Martin’s to deliver a public talk, “What’s Love Got to Do with It? White Desire, Country Music, and Cross-Border Love,” a talk that emerges from his recent book “Whiteness on the Border.” The presentation examines how representations of Mexican women in country music expose the dynamics of white desire.

While many would describe white supremacy as charged with hate and degradation, Bebout demonstrates how “racist love” may be harder to tackle, for the seemingly ubiquitous erotic, exotic Mexicana of U.S. popular culture is often used to render white masculinity as both desirable and idealized. The talk concludes by exploring other models of transborder love that may be used to resist the logics of domination.