Latinas on the Line: Invisible Information Workers in Telecommunications [Hardcover]

Latinas on the Lineprovides a compelling analysis and historical and theoretical grounding of the oral histories, never before seen, of Latina information workers in the Bell System from their entrance in 1973 to their retirements by 2015. Author Melissa Villa-Nicholas demonstrates the importance of Latinas of the field of telecommunications through their own words and uses supporting archival research to provide an overview of how Latinas engage and remember a critical analysis of their work place, information technologies, and the larger globalized economy and shifting borderlands through their intersectional identities as information workers. The book offers a rich and engaging portrait of the critical history of Latinas in telecommunications, from their manual to automated to digitized labor.

 Latinas on the Line: Invisible Information Workers in Telecommunicationsbrings to attention the histories of Latinas in telecommunications, demonstrating how these histories contribute to the larger canons on Latina labor, communications, race, gender, and social constructions of technology. Through their intersectional identities, Latinas in telecommunications offer particular insights to the history of telecommunications and their own ‘belonging’ within these technological spaces.
 MELISSA VILLA-NICHOLAS is an assistant professor at the Harrington School of Media and Communications and the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Rhode Island. Her publications include “Data Body Milieu: The Latinx immigrant at the center of technological development” inFeminist Media Studiesand “Missing Cells: The Growing Economic Value of Immigrant and Refugee Biological Data" in Bitch Media.
 Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Introduction           l³!