在Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor在2009年的确认听证会中，新闻媒体将Sotomayor描绘成一个“移民成功故事”，回忆起艾琳Mata，妇女和性别研究副教授。然而作为波多黎各，Sotomayor不是一个移民。Mata说，通过这种方式框架法官是有吸引力的，因为美国有一个叙述，庆祝移民如何吸收，证明自己，并在世界上搬到 - 从而实现美国梦。

The reality for many immigrants is far different, however, and it is these other narratives, or “oppositional stories,” that interest Mata. InDomestic Disturbances: Re-Imagining Narratives of Gender, Labor, and Immigration（本月从德克萨斯大学出版社的新闻），她检查了通过剧院，电影，文学，艺术和摄影表达的Chicana / Latina移民故事。她的书“挖掘了”否则可能会忽视的故事“，”有助于越来越多的对话，就是个人居住在当前的全球移民条件下，“她说。

Mata, whose Ph.D. is in literature, had assumed she would end up as an English professor. She’s grateful to have found a place for herself instead in an interdisciplinary department where she’s free to conduct research from a variety of angles. One current project focuses on a female muralist in San Antonio who is educating the urban community about healthy food choices through a Chicana superhero figure. Another project examines the art created for a Freedom Ride in 2012 that involved 40 undocumented immigrants riding across 11 southern states on a bus that read “No Papers, No Fear” on the outside.

At Wellesley, Mata teaches courses on Chican@/Latin@ studies (the @ symbol is used to honor multiple genders) and keeps busy arranging for artists and activists to come to campus and share their diverse stories with the larger Wellesley community. Her love of stories, in fact, is what drives her work. “I became a professor,” she says with a laugh, “so that I could share my favorite books with a captive audience.”