Alex Chavez

Nancy O'Neill Assistant Professor
Anthropology

Biography

Artist-scholar-producer, Alex E. Chávez is the Nancy O'Neill Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology and a faculty fellow of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He earned his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010 with a concentration in Folklore and Public Culture and holds doctoral portfolios in both Mexican American Studies and Cultural Studies. 

As a Cultural Anthropologist trained in Linguistic Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, and Folklore, his research explores the political efficacy of Latina/o/x expressive culture, with particular interest in how sound and aurality intersect with larger social concerns surrounding migration, racialized personhood, place-making, and the intimacies that bind everyday life across physical and cultural borders. In this regard, he has also consistently crossed the boundary between artist and scholar. As a professional musician for two decades, he has engaged in music-making alongside his interlocuters, transforming his own experiences into a unique perspective on the body politics of performance that has shaped his understanding of how people cross various types of borders.

His most recent research project explored the performance of huapango arribeño—a musical form that hails from north-central Mexico—among undocumented Mexican migrants in the United States. Supported by the National Science Foundation and the Ford Foundation this work forms the basis of his award-winning book Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño (Duke University Press 2017). This book represents the first extended study of huapango arribeño and offers a fine-tuned ethnographic analysis of how Mexican migrants construct meaningful communities amidst the contemporary politics of immigration in the United States. He significantly extended the reach of this research through collaboration with the Smithsonian Institute. In 2016, he produced the Smithsonian Folkways recording of huapango arribeño featuring Guillermo Velázquez y Los Leones de la Sierra da Xichú included in the world-renowned Tradiciones music series. This first-ever recording of its kind highlights huapango arribeño at its finest and makes anthropological knowledge of this music-culture accessible to a global audience.

An accomplished musician and multi-instrumentalist, Chávez has performance experience in an array of styles ranging from American popular music to traditional Mexican son. He has recorded and toured with his own music projects, composed documentary scores (most recently Emmy Award-winning El Despertar [2016] & Where Soldiers Come From [2011]), and collaborated with acclaimed artists including Grammy Award winners Quetzal, Grupo Fantasma, and Latin Grammy Award nominated Sones de México, in addition to Charanga Cakewalk/Lila Downs, Martin Perna of the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, and various artists on the International Anthem record label.

He has published in various academic journals, including the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Latino Studies, Latin American Music Review, Southern Cultures, Música Oral del Sur, has contributed to prominent volumes, including Decentering the Nation: Music, Mexicanidad, and Globalization (2019), Making Sense of Language (2016), Latino, American, Dream (2016), Iconic Mexico (2015), Celebrating Latino Folklore (2012), in addition to Con La Música a Otra Parte (2010). His writing has also been featured in public venues such as the Huffington Post, Revista Contratiempo, and CaMP Anthropoogy.

For further info, see www.aechavez.com