Northern California Innocence Project Virtual Class Visit

Racial Justice Act #RJA4ALL 

This past week, Lori Stone from the Northern California Innocence Project spoke in my class about the work of freeing wrongfully convicted persons, as well as their policy work. The program has: received 16,000 requests for help with false convictions & helped free 32 wrongfully convicted people that account for 468 years lost in prison to false convictions. 

Stone made us aware that this week, the Racial Justice Act is on the floor for vote this week, allowing for claims of racial discrimination against judges, jurors & lawyers. This bill is an important step towards dismantling a justice system that's designed to imprison people of color. #rja4all

My Article in Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2020

Super proud that my Composition Studies article "Decolonial Potential in a Multilingual FYC" was selected by the Parlor Press editors to be included in this collection. I feel really honored that Laura Micciche, then editor at Composition Studies, nominated my article "Decolonial Potential in a Multilingual FYC" for the collection *Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2020*. I was also proud that it was selected by the editors for the inclusion in the collection of really excellent scholarship that the editors described as "transformative." Thank you to Laura and the Parlor Press editors. I'm looking forward to getting a copy.

 Link to the website: https://parlorpress.com/collections/best-of-the-journals-in-rhetoric-and-composition/products/best-of-the-journals-in-rhetoric-and-composition-2020

Contributed a Post to NCTE Blog

 #NationalPoetryMonth and Prison

Thankful to the folks at National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) who asked me to contribute a post to the organization's blog in the spirit of #NationalPoetryMonth. Inspired by my trip to San Quentin with SCU students and Maura Tarnoff, the teaching of writing by Erec Toso in Arizona prisons, and my interview with Ana Castillo about her memoir, I discuss poetry and prison in these tumultuous times: https://ncte.org/blog/2021/04/prison-poetry-tumultuous-times/?fbclid=IwAR3awJewv92DqunoS63uWKEEuaFL4yy2k4Kz8LsP-9lMWTGXKqAbjGvdu3g

A Guest on Latinx Pop Lab Podcast

 

Super thankful to Distinguished Professor and author/editor of 20+ books, Frederick Luis Aldama, for having me as a guest on his Latinx Pop Lab video podcast. I had a really great time talking about my book and other Latinx pop culture.

NCTE Featured Session

 This Week, My First Virtual Conference

I'll be presenting on rascuache pedagogy for teaching digital composing. Super honored to be on a featured session at such a prestigious national conference that brings together educators from all levels.

New Article in Rhetoric Review

 Co-Authored Piece with Former Student (and Academia de Cruz) Contributor Perla Luna

Link to article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07350198.2020.1764764

Pedagogue Podcast Interview

A couple weeks back, I did an interview with Shane Woods for the Pedagogue podcast. This past week, Shane received a digital scholarship award from the Computers and Composition conference--is it just a coincidence? All jokes aside, I was glad I had the chance to speak with Shane because he has had a really comprehensive and inclusive selection of podcast guests.

Pedagogue · Episode 24: Cruz Medina

Link here: https://www.pedagoguepodcast.com/blog/episode-24-cruz-medina

From the Pedagogue website:

Pedagogue​ is a podcast hosted by Shane A. Wood and sustained by the voices of others. Pedagogue is a podcast about teachers talking writing, dedicated to building a supportive community, committed to facilitating conversations that move across institutions and positions, and designed to help celebrate the labor teachers do inside and outside the classroom.​The purpose of Pedagogue is to promote diverse voices at various institutions and help foster community and collaboration among teachers of writing. Each episode is a conversation with a teacher (or multiple teachers) about their experiences teaching writing, their work, inspirations, assignments, assessments, successes, and challenges. Episodes include voices from secondary and post-secondary teachers, graduate students, emeriti, distinguished teacher-scholars, and emerging teacher-scholars from high schools, community colleges, four-year universities, private universities, research universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs).

2020 Roots & Routes Music Festival 

This past evening at SCU, I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with members of the Music department, English and Ethnic Studies to discuss the themes of genre-bending, political music as a part of the Roots and Routes Music Festival. 

The Festival is headlined by SCU's Frank Sinatra chair, Rhiannnon Giddens, who performs Saturday Feb.8. See her NPR Tiny Desk Concert below:


Rhiannon Giddens on Amazon:

My Review of Urrea's The House of Broken Angels

American Book Review

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/745323

My review of Luis Alberto Urrea's The House of Broken Angels

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/745323

Feminisms and Rhetorics 2019

Great Roundtable and Sessions at FemRhet 2019

Last week, I presented at the 2019 Feminisms and Rhetorics conference in Harrisonburg, Virginia. My SCU colleague Prof Amy Lueck presented her paper "A Feminist Ethics for Indigenous Historiography” based on her research of indigenous spaces in the Santa Clara area. I presented on some of his findings based on research I conducted with my former research assistant Perla Luna (English and Sociology '19) on Latinx publishing.

 During my roundtable, my colleague Amy made some great points during the Q&A following the presenters.

A photo of myself while presenting where I am remarkably not motioning frantically with my hands, speaking about statistics related to the Latinx Caucus bibliography.

Walter Mignolo Talking De-Linking

Bookmarking for Later

I really want to watch this, so I'm posting it here to look at later.

De-linking across Indigeneity: Walter Mignolo and Linda Tuhiwai Smith from Te Tuhi on Vimeo.

Skyping into Texas State

"Texas Wants You Anyway"

(Me on the small screen)

There's a Lyle Lovett song "That's Right, You're Not From Texas" with the line that Texas wants you anyway, and I felt the love from Texas as I skyped into Octavio Pimentel's graduate course on multilingualism in teaching writing on 10/21. I had the opportunity to speak about my spring 2019 Composition Studies article "Decolonial Potential in a Multilingual FYC" and teaching a course with multilingual students in Silicon Valley.

(Sharing my screen with some stats on hiring here in Silicon Valley)

The students came in with an array of experiences and interests, which kept the discussion lively.  

 (A great slide with quote from Inoue that gets at how language policy substituted for other forms of discrimination)

 (Talking with my hands as per usual)

I also wanted to give a quick thanks and shoutout to Brad Jacobson, who invited me to skype with his graduate course at UTEP the week prior--I wasn't lying about Texas making me feel welcome. With Jacobson's graduate course, I had the opportuntity to discuss my chapter on digital testimonio that was included in the digital edited collection Racial Shorthand that I co-edited with Octavio Pimentel. 

Trailer for our collection: