Friday, April 29, 2016

Great Short Doc on Ethnic Studies by Alexandra Hidalgo

A Video Argument for Ethnic Studies

I couldn't help but want to share this video argument by friend and colleague Alexandra Hidalgo on Ethnic Studies and raising bilingual children. Not only does she respond well to potential criticisms and fears of implementing ethnic studies into education, but she also has two niños the same age as mine (the older one even shares the same name as my older son). If you watch all the way to the end, you may see a brief glance of yours truly.



Note: this video argument was originally posted to Literacy & NCTE: the Official Blog of National Council for Teachers of Englishhttp://blogs.ncte.org/index.php/2016/04/video-argument-ethnic-studies/


Video Argument Credits From the Literacy & NCTE blog:

Written, directed, filmed, and edited by
ALEXANDRA HIDALGO

Additional footage
NATHANIEL BOWLER
BEN LAUREN

Soundtrack
“Rhythn”
by Paddington Bear
Downloaded from soundofpicture.com

Thank you to:
National Council of Teachers of English
Conference on College Composition and Communication
Iris Ruiz
Christina Cedillo
Members of the Latin@ Caucus

Creative Commons License
Attribution
Alexandra Hidalgo, 2016

Alexandra Hidalgo is a filmmaker and assistant professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University. She’s the co-founder and editor-in-chief of agnès films, a website that supports the work of women and feminist filmmakers."




Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Anti-Mexico Rhetoric as Conservative Political Strategy

Unknown Conservative Aligning with Xenophobia for Political Gain

The video below is a recent ad that's made the rounds in online Latino media (Latino Rebels, @Eyegiene) where it's been called out for riding the coat tails of Trump's anti-immigrant and anti-Latino rhetoric that NPR showed is popular with white supremacist groups.

As someone interested in cultural rhetorics, I've been asked if the different consciousness-raising rallies have been necessary in terms of drawing attention to the experiences of people of color across campuses. Not only do I believe these rallies are necessary because I know students involved in this activism, but also because of political ads like this one by unknown conservative hopeful Pape that demonstrate how a "silent majority" continues to espouse and normalize discrimination, thereby upholding institutional racism that negatively affects campus cultures.




Of course I can't simply have this sad attempt at mis-representing Latinos without a bit of Lalo Alcaraz's political satire to make light of what is a dark underbelly of political ideology. The action-reaction of political theater that unfortunately has impacts on the material lives of those treated as subjects or hot-button topics for ideological-appeals to audiences trained to fear the "Other."



For more on the political cartoons of Lalo Alcaraz, see my book Reclaiming Poch@ Pop:




Sunday, April 17, 2016

The Bread Load School of English Santa Fe NM

My Master's Level Course in Multimodal Writing in the Digital Age
This summer I will be teaching as a part of the Santa Fe faculty for the The Bread Loaf School of English. The Bread Loaf program is a graduate level six-week intensive summer program for practicing English teachers seeking to earn a Master's degree or further develop pedagogical practices. I look forward to working with wonderful students and learning from the experience of innovative colleagues.


Exemplary Teaching Network
I will join a prominent group of scholar-professors at the Santa Fe campus, including, but not limiting to rhetoric and composition scholar Damian Baca and Chicana writer Ana Castillo, author of So Far from God: A Novel. My course is informed by my research on the digital writing genres of Twitter and digital storytelling, as well as my teaching with iPads and blogs.



Course description

This class asks how has new media literacy affected what makes ‘good’ writing in digital and online composing environments? And, once we understand new media literacy, how can we begin to take practical steps to implement multimodal practices in writing pedagogy? In Writing Studies, composing written communication no longer singularly refers to alphabetic texts and the ‘technology’ of the essay. Reflecting metacognitively on the writing process will bring to light what happens in the translation of alphabetic texts into the genres available in online writing environments such as blogs, instructional YouTube videos, and podcasts.

For more: http://www.middlebury.edu/blse/campuses/nm/nmcourses



Friday, April 15, 2016

CCCC 2016 Re-Cap

Presentations, Awards and Good Friends

Arrived in Houston, TX on a red eye flight at 4:30am (never again) on April 7 in time for the New Comer's coffee, where I met a grad student from University of Louisville who knew my colleague Amy Lueck (featured below). I then headed over to the Opening Session where Joyce Carter encouraged us all to be more entrepreneurial in our research.


Following the Opening Session, I met with Santa Clara University colleagues Simone Billings, Amy Lueck, and Julia Voss for our customary conference photo--'cause it didn't happen if there isn't a photo in this Instagram generation.

Here I am presenting along side Romeo Garcia (PhD Candidate Syracuse) and Karrieann Soto (PhD Candidate Syracuse University). We were fortunate enough to have Damian Baca (University of Arizona) chair the panel with respondents Aja Martinez (Syracuse University) and Jaime Armin Mejia (Texas State, San Marcos). My presentation was based on my chapter in a forthcoming collection on Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition.


With the next generation of Scholars for the Dream Award winners, along with the rest of the members of the committee that I had the privilege to serve on (as a Scholar for the Dream Award recipient in 2010).




At the exhibitor's hall, I bought a copy of Christopher Gonzalez's book on the writing of Junot Diaz.


A photo from the LatinX caucus meeting where I had the opportunity to see old friends and meet many young scholars from UT El Paso.


Another fun action shot of me presenting, because apparently I'm a gestural speaker.

Get your own copy of Christopher Gonzalez's book: