Alejandro Paz

Biography

Alejandro I. Paz is a linguistic anthropologist broadly interested in language in contexts of globalization, transnationalism and diaspora; public communication and media; and Israel in the Middle East. He received his PhD in Anthropology and Linguistics (with distinction) from the University of Chicago in 2010, and he is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, as well as holding a graduate appointment in Linguistics. His ethnographic research on the public and domestic lives of noncitizen Latinos in Israel was supported by grants from SSHRC, NSF, Fulbright-Hayes, and Wenner-Gren, among others. His article on chisme (gossip) among noncitizen Latinos in Israel received the Society for Linguistic Anthropology’s 2008 graduate student paper prize and appeared in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. He is working on a monograph, Domestics in Public: Voice, Citizenship, and Noncitizen Latinos in Israel to consider the complexity of the public lives of domestic workers, especially during a campaign for a pathway to citizenship. He also has publications in progress from earlier ethnography on archaeological tours given by religious Zionist settlers in East Jerusalem, and has started new research that explores the practices of translation, commensuration and cultural mediation with Israeli online news published in English.

Research Interest

Language and Ethnicity, Media and Publics, Translation and Mediation