Pedagogy:

We Need to Be Safe to Be Dangerous

As a hemispheric Latinx cultural studies educator, several urgent questions figure at the forefront of my teaching: What cultural positions shape our views on borders and migration? Why are attitudes in the U.S. important to hemispheric Latinx conditions and prospects? How can we decolonize the way we think about knowledge and intellectual authority? In my classrooms and workshops, I approach these questions by fostering a learning environment in which participants feel both empowered and invested, and I use a variety of techniques from performance pedagogy and experiential learning to amplify safety across difference. In order to be actors rather than spectators in our social circumstances, we need to cultivate spaces of radical inclusion and compassion to amplify the transformative potential of everyone in the circle. 

Featured workshops include “Living Altars” (performance pedagogy), “The Other is My Selfie” (diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice), and “Trust the Circle” (facilitated community conversations). My pedagogical genealogy includes the practices and principles of La Pocha Nostra, Rubén Castilla Herrera, Agusto Boal, Albany Park Theater, Be the Street, NCCJ Brotherhood Sisterhood, White Plum Zen practice, council practice, and Chicanx/borderlands consciousness.