HAPA cup of sugar: A play about race, family and identity

Written by SCU Student Marissa Martinez

This quarter I've been teaching a course titled "Writing about Literature and Culture" (English 79A), in which we look at how some communities are misrepresented from mainstream representations, asking students to look at some of the communities to which they belong to address some of these issues.

So I was excited to hear that one of my students, Marissa Martinez, who has been researching issues related to being bi-racial and bicultural, wrote a play about the very topic. Tonight, here at Santa Clara University Fess Parker Studio Theatre, Martinez's Hapa Cup of Sugar will play for its second night.

Poch@ Pop Across Digital Space

Skype Guest Lecture

On Monday, I had a great time skyping in with Octavio Pimentel's grad students in the  MA program in Rhetoric and Composition at Texas State University. Dr. Pimentel's graduate course is on cultural and linguistic diversity within the classroom, and his students brought up interesting concerns regarding choices of language in writing and how students are framed by deficiency rhetoric. 

I spoke with them about my book Reclaiming Poch@ Pop, and we discussed how public discourse and memory about highly politicized topics can be addressed in the analysis of engaging pop culture such as political satire that engage the relevant issue. Of course, Donald Trump came up as the exigency of this moment of kairos, and I included some images by Lalo Alcaraz that respond to the slanderous depiction of Latin@s, specifically Mexicans, in his public speeches.

(Lalo Alcaraz)

Al Madrigal's Pocho Quest

Since My Book Reclaiming Poch@ Pop

As it generally happens, once you complete your research and publish your findings, something new comes out that speaks directly to your subject matter. I mention Al Madrigal in Chapter 4 of my book Reclaiming Poch@ Pop because of his work on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, specifically his reporting on the anti-Ethnic Studies law HB 2281 in Tucson, Arizona.




In this video for Fusion, Madrigal touches on issues of language insecurity with regard to his inability to speak Spanish, stereotypes from outside of the Latin@ community as well as stereotypes from within Latin@ communities. When he starts interviewing Speedy Gonzalez three-quarters into the video, it kind of loses steam--but the scenes with bilingual kids, Jorge Ramos, and the first three minutes touch on more salient aspect of intracultural rhetoric.

Poch@ Pop Review in Rhetoric Society Quarterly

My book reviewed by Romeo García

In issue 4 of Volume 45 of Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Romeo García of Syracuse University provides a thoughtful, well-referenced mediation on my book Reclaiming Poch@ Pop: Examining the Rhetoric of Cultural Deficiency. García articulates questions and exigencies about decolonial work that inform his discussion of chapters in the monograph.

If you have access to Rhetoric Society Quarterly, you can see it here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02773945.2015.1061862

Chapter in Collection on Teaching Latino/a Lit

Latino/a Literature in the Classroom: Twenty-first-century Approaches to Teaching

From the description:

In one of the most rapidly growing areas of literary study, this volume provides the first comprehensive guide to teaching Latino/a literature in all variety of learning environments. Essays by internationally renowned scholars offer an array of approaches and methods to the teaching of the novel, short story, plays, poetry, autobiography, testimonial, comic book, children and young adult literature, film, performance art, and multi-media digital texts, among others. The essays provide conceptual vocabularies and tools to help teachers design courses that pay attention to:

• Issues of form across a range of storytelling media
• Issues of content such as theme and character
• Issues of historical periods, linguistic communities, and regions
• Issues of institutional classroom settings

The volume innovatively adds to and complicates the broader humanities curriculum by offering new possibilities for pedagogical practice.

Reclaiming Poch@ Pop in Chapman Magazine

On Diversity and Writing
A couple months back, I was interviewed by Chapman Magazine about my book Reclaiming Poch@ Pop. I earned my MFA in creative writing and MA in English at Chapman University in Orange, California (deep behind the 'orange curtain'), and where I came to appreciate fellow pocho Chapman-grad Gustavo Arellano for his insightful barbs in the OC Weekly. It was great to be recognized by an institution where I'm an alumnus.

I tried to shout out as many of the professors at Chapman who influenced my research trajectory, but there's never enough space to mention everyone. I don't think Mark Axelrod made it in there even though he was the first to give me a shot as a TA in his upper-division grad course. His course on Borges and Cortazar also was the inspiration for my travels to Buenos Aires. Brian Glaser intellectually challenged and demonstrated saintly patience. And no one can discount James Blaylock's contribution to the writing program there at Chapman, where he's an inspiration as a prolific writer and steadfast educator.

Read the full story here:
https://blogs.chapman.edu/magazine/2015/06/19/focus-on-diversity/

From the Academia de Cruz archives:

 (Gustavo Arellano and I)

(At the Borges Cultural Center in Buenos Aires)

Computers and Writing 2015 Storify

Here's the Storify I put together from the Computers and Writing conference that I attended with Julia Voss and presented on a roundtable Trish Serviss and six LEAD students who discussed their experiences using iPads in first year writing and beyond. Highlights included the Social Justice workshop, discussion of document design, the keynote by a Native American poet, as well as plenty of meta-discussions of Twitter in relation to knowledge, identity and activism.

(Trish Serviss, Aliyah, Tiffany, Vivian, Brian, Jessica, Sean and I)

Computers and Writing 2015

Technoliteracy In(ter)ventions

On May 30, I will be presenting with several undergraduate students from the LEAD first generation college student program here at Santa Clara University, along with Trish Serviss on the iPad Pilot program that took place here from 2012-2015. The title of our panel is “Intervention and Access: FYC Outcomes, iPads and Underrepresented Students.” Trish and I will introduce the school, program and reflect on our own experiences, and the students have put together their own multimodal composition to document their thoughts as well as interviews with other students and staff in LEAD.

For a study on the iPad Pilot from the Innovation in Teaching Committee at SCU: https://cruznmedina.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/2013-14_collaborative_report.pdf

The above study provides interesting statistical data on the use of iPads for different tasks, including communication with professors, reading and writing, and organization.
From the study:

Comparison with non-LEAD 1^st generation students:

•       Comparison group: “LEAD scholars were much more likely to strongly agree (on a 4-point scale) that educational technology had benefited their learning experience” (Bachen, Culter, & Elrod, 2014, p.8)

Below is the video reflection I composed after teaching in the pilot from 2013-2014.