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 English: http://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."

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."

(pocho.com)

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

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

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:

Digital Mestizo Mania: Norma Elia Cantu & Danielle DeVoss

Translingual Chicana Literature and the Digital Writing Matters
My digital mestizo senses were tingling as multimodal writing and Chicanidad in the Southwest were brought front and center for a wave of excellence in theory, teaching and aesthetics. We were extremely fortunate in February to have so many great speakers at SCU.  Dànielle DeVoss gave a talk for faculty and students on digital writing in the 21st Century, in addition to a workshop for faculty, and Norma Elia Cantú met with students and gave a reading from Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera.

Digital Writing Matters

Dànielle DeVoss was extremely generous with her time, meeting with members of the writing program faculty to discuss digital and multimodal writing curricula, assignments, and assessment. I was fortunate enough to speak with her about some ideas for my summer course (more on that in a future post) on teaching with technology. DeVoss helped define Digital Writing for the different incantations of Digital Humanities projects across campus.

 DeVoss outlined Digital Writing Matters as: (requiring) critical thinking, networked, collaborative, multimodal, remixed, policed--and policy(ed). Students and faculty took part in an engaging talk that provoked questions about critical media literacy and the ethics of online composing.

Students responded well to DeVoss's uses Lolcats to explain the collaborative aspect of writing in online environments. Examples of professional online media and student projects provided inspiration for what is possible for writing instruction in the 21st Century.

Sexism, Semiotics and Unruly Writing

During Norma Elia Cantú's talk, she described some of the sexist standards expected of women, where she grew up in Texas, evidenced by the book one of the women in her family wrote about the proper manners for women. Cantú spoke lovingly of her brother who died when he was young, and she described her writing process as extremely unregimented, writing best in the middle of the night. I particularly enjoyed the visual aspect of Cantú's reading that she explained came from her academic training in semiotics, an often ignored visual mode of literacy that many print-based writers do not employ in readings. My students who attended drew comparisons to Anzaldua's Borderlands, which they read in their fall first year writing. They identified with the connections among identity, culture and language.

One of the exciting projects that Cantú has also been working on is the translation of Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera into Spanish. 

From Dànielle DeVoss:

*Special thanks to Trish Serviss, Julia Voss and Juan Velasco for coordinating these amazing events*

Machete Viene!

Forthcoming Collection on Latin@ Popular Culture

Edited by none other than the prolific Frederick Luis Aldama, this collection The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Popular Culture includes examinations of expressions of Latin@ culture across various mediums of pop productions. They say don't judge a book by its cover, but they lacked semiotic depictions at the level of this beautiful design.

My chapter is on the pop expressions of Dia de los Muertos (or Pop de los Muertos), focusing on such recent films as the Book of Life, while paying homage to Romero's Dead Series.

2016 CCCC in Houston, TX

Flyer for My Presentation
In addition to my presentation and those by Syracuse PhD candidates Romeo Garcia and Karrieann Soto on Local/Regional strategies for decolonialism, we're having prestigious chairs and respondents, including Aja Y Martinez (Binghamton), Damian Baca (U of Arizona) and Jaime Armin Mejia (Texas State-San Marcos).

I anticipate a lively discussion despite the late Saturday morning session time of 11am. With so many rhetorical chingon@s and compositionist@s in attendance, you know I plan to get to Houston with practice, practice, practice.

See you there!

The 'First Hispanics on TV?' Says Don Francisco

Mini-Doc on Sabado Gigante

I was just talking to the students in my Bilingual first-year writing class about Sabado Gigante, and there was a mix of those who knew what it was and those who didn't. In this mini-doc, we find that there was some pushback against the objectification of women, the changing dynamics of advertising and how Sabado Gigante was the first place on TV for 'Hispanics' (their use not mine), although not exactly poch@ pop because it was primarily in Spanish (although the doc is in English).



For more on los poch@s, my book:

My Edited Collection on Race and Technology

Update on Ebook Project I'm Co-editing

The project began as a featured panel with Octavio Pimentel, and Natasha Jones at the Conference for College Composition and Communication in Indianapolis, Indiana (2104), and it has successfully made it through the proposal stage to the press. With feedback, chapters from contributors have been collected, circulated for review, and a great web designer who has experience with the press has been hired to mediate the chapters into HTML for the e-book platform. Would love to have more to note at this time, but we have submitted the e-manuscript to the press for review, so please keep los dedos cruzado in the meantime.

Below is a screenshot from the collection's homepage.

The 2014 featured panel was for the edited collection called Communicating Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in Technical Communication on technical communication and race that Octavio Pimentel co-edited with Miriam Williams. On another positive note, this collection also won the 2016 CCCC award for edited collection on Technical Communication.

Review of Poch@ Pop in Reflections Journal

Reflections Review Raises Important Issues about Decolonialism
In the current issue of Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetorics, Civic Writing and Service Learning, Victor Del Hierro raises interesting questions about decolonialism, geo-politics, strategic essentialism and examining literacies beyond what is written. These questions remind me of the current issue of College English on translingualism in which Ellen Cushman emphasizes the decolonial potential of de-valuing English as the center of college writing while Suresh Canagarajah outlines a course for preparing graduate students to teach translingual students, and Keith Gilyard offers warnings about the potential for flattening linguistic difference, especially stripping the discrimination away from populations speaking particularly de-valued varieties of English. Because language is one of the main characteristics of what constructs the poch@ identity, I'm similarly interested in seeing how much the performance of linguistic difference will become a strategy employed by poch@s.

Del Hierro concludes his review:

The emphasis on Poch@ Pop artists’ abilities to operate within pop culture makes them important rhetoricians and communicators for Mexican Americans. Because of the myriad of experiences and political leanings within the community, the role of the Poch@ becomes vital towards creating a familiar ground for inter-generational belonging within and for Mexicans within the United States. (107)

Find the current issue of Reflections online, your subscribing university library, or through Interlibrary Loan (ILL): http://reflectionsjournal.net/purchase-articles/vol-15-2015/