Mark R Villegas Associate Professor of American Studies

Biography

Mark Redondo Villegas is an associate professor of American Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Culture and Theory at the University of California, Irvine and M.A. in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2021, he was a postdoctoral fellow for the Inclusion Imperative’s Visiting Faculty Fellowship Program at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County's Dresher Center for the Humanities.  

Mark’s research and creative work have always been rooted in community engagement and collaboration. As a filmmaker trained in the Center for Ethnocommunications at the University of California, Los Angeles, he embraces an artistic and scholarly imperative to recuperate the stories of marginalized people and histories. The documentaries he created focused on the politics and cultural production of Filipino and Filipino American hip hop performers and are screened in classrooms, community events, festivals, and conferences around the nation and in the Philippines. His role in co-editing and contributing to the anthology Empire of Funk: Hip Hop and Representation in Filipina/o America (Cognella Academic Publishing, 2014) exemplifies his commitment to working with artists, students, fans, educators, community organizers, and scholars in order to compile essays, poetry, and visual art. In 2014, he organized a conference around the anthology at the University of California, Irvine, where he invited students, scholars, and community members from all over California to interact with artists. For Mark, it is crucial to link scholarly work with the actual people whose culture and politics he is attempting to make visible.

His book, Manifest Technique: Hip Hop, Empire, and Visionary Filipino American Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2021), examines Filipino Americans’ decades-long commitment to crafting, worldmaking, and collaborating in hip hop culture. He argues that hip hop culture has operated as a critical site where Filipino Americans have been investigating their racial position in history and the world, thus expanding the opportunities for these practitioners to author their popular representation.

Mark has two book projects currently in development. His future book monograph, tentatively titled Geek Hop: Study, Science, and Orientalism in Hip Hop Culture, examines hip hop’s “b-side” (lesser-known) core aesthetic and politics: the “geeky” elements reflected in comic book culture, martial arts, anime, and science fiction. Rather than adjacent to hip hop’s central themes, he shows how geek culture has always been integral to hip hop. His other future book project, tentatively titled Look Out Weekend! Parties, Promoters, and Filipino American Visual Culture, will provide critical insight into Filipino American visual culture from the late-1970s to 1990s throughout the United States. This project will curate the visual representations young Filipino Americans were creating in their advertisements for their birthday celebrations, graduations, collegiate club programs, and weekend jams.

He published “Redefined What Is Meant to be Divine: Prayer and Protest in Blue Scholars” in Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly (Vol. 41, Number 3), “Nation in the Universe: The Cosmic Vision of Afro-Filipino Futurism” in Amerasia Journal (Vol. 43, Number 2, 2017), “Currents of Militarization, Flows of Hip Hop: Expanding the Geographies of Filipino American Culture” in the Journal of Asian American Studies (Vol. 19, Number 1, 2016), and "'Gangsta Chi': RZA’s Hip Hop Orientalism and Geeky Codeswitching” in the Journal of Popular Music Studies (Vol. 34, Number 4, 2022).

He wrote a book review for  Strange Fruit of the Black Pacific: Imperialism’s Racial Justice and its Fugitives for the Journal of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association.

He provided the following encyclopedia entries: “Reggaeton” in the St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture and “Filipino Turntablism/Mobile DJs" in The Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore.

Visit his website at www.markvillegas.com. 

Courses

Spring 2022
Hip Hop: Global Politics of Culture
Introduction to Asian American Studies: War, Empire, and Migration

Spring 2020
Hip Hop: Global Politics of Culture
Introduction to Asian American Studies: War, Empire, and Migration
Gender and Race in Ethnic Studies Film

Fall 2019
Introduction to Asian American Studies: War, Empire, and Migration
Gender and Race in Ethnic Studies Film

Spring 2019
Hip Hop: Global Politics of Culture
Introduction to Asian American Studies: War, Empire, and Migration
Gender and Race in Ethnic Studies Film

Fall 2018
AMS 271: Hip Hop: Global Politics of Culture
CNX 192: Food, Fashion, and the Future: The Everyday Politics of Race

Spring 2018
AMS 271: Hip Hop: Global Politics of Culture
Introduction to Asian American Studies

Fall 2017 
CNX 192: Food, Fashion, and the Future: The Everyday Politics of Race
AMS 271: Hip Hop: The Politics of Culture