Mario Montaño is a cultural anthropologist and folklorist. His research focuses on the Texas-Mexico border and northern region of Mexico. His interests are on the anthropology of food and tries to answer the following questions: How do foods centered activities influence the construction of cultural and gender identity? How do food preparation, distribution, and consumption contribute to men and women's social position and power? How does food symbolically connote maleness and femaleness? In addition, for the past six years, he has been teaching a course on the Rio Grande River, focusing on the different regional, Hispanic cultures living along the Rio Grande River. Currently, he is working on a research proposal for the National Endowment of the Humanities for a two-year, ethnographic-historical research project on the Rio Grande Basin.
