She specializes in Latin American film and media studies, focusing on Brazil and questions of citizenship. She is the author of Brazilian Women's Filmmaking: From Dictatorship to Democracy (University of Illinois Press, 2012) and coeditor with Hongmei Li of The Middle Class in Emerging Societies: Consumers, Lifestyles and Markets (Routledge, 2016). She is currently working on a project that examines contemporary nation branding and Brazil.