Priscilla Pena Ovalle

Examines why every Latina star in Hollywood history, from Dolores Del Rio in the 1920s to Jennifer Lopez in the 2000s, began as a dancer or danced onscreen. It argues that a century of representing brown women as natural dancers has popularized the notion that Latinas are inherently passionate and promiscuous, and introduces the concepts of 'inbetween-ness' and 'racial mobility' to further illuminate how racialized sexuality and the dancing female body operate in film.