Category: Sociological Imagination
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Teaching Racial Justice in the face of white supremacy
Watching white supremacists and extremists breach Capitol Hill on Wednesday, January 6,2021, I wavered between disbelief and feeling like all of this was so predictable. After all, 4 years of a regime that leaned into racism, xenophobia, sexism, transphobia, violence and fascism, emboldened white extremists. Even the Department of Homeland Security under Donald Trump flagged…
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Award Assembly, then and now
When my family arrived to the U.S. in 1992, our whole lives were upended. The only thing, ya girl Val, could hold onto for some stability was school. At Fair Oaks Elementary in Concord, CA, the monthly (?) awards assembly was always a treat for me. I always waited with bated breath to see if…
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Final Project Round-Up 2019
A month out from the Spring semester and academic year, I’ve been reflecting on the amazing final projects my students created as a part of our learning communities. For most of my upper division classes, I offer a final project menu. I developed this menu after years of offering group, creative project (often in video form).…
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Montreal and Irvine, Snow and Sun
The first month of the year hasn’t ended yet and I’ve been to three universities, delivered a handful of talks from classrooms, speaker series events, seminars and community centers! I love that touring The Labor of Care allows me to talk about transnational families, possibilities of organizing with migrants, emotions and youth, technology and solidarity and resistance.…
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Labor of Care at UC Irvine tomorrow
It’ll be my first time in Irvine! I’m looking forward to sharing ideas about care work among Filipina migrants and possibilities for solidarity in the book. This is my favorite chapter in the book to discuss! More importantly, I’ll be engaging with the work of Filipina American historian and doctoral candidate, Stefanie Lira. Stefanie’s work…
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Beyond Final Papers, Beyond the Classroom
In the past few years, I’ve invested in assigning creative final projects for my upper division classes. Across the three institutions I’ve taught at as a tenure-track professor, the risk is high (because students loathe group work so they’re always giving me side-eye for assigning a group project as a requirement and sometimes it ends…
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What do you write after a 2-year blog silence?
I haven’t published anything on this blog for a while now. And mostly, it’s kinda like when you had beef with your friend in high school and then you just don’t talk for a long time and then it becomes real awkward to even think about talking and then the distance just grows so you…
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Filipinos in Costa Rica
While in Costa Rica last week, me and my crew took an excursion to the Manuel Antonio national park to take in the beautiful, lush greenery that is Costa Rica and follow a trail to a popular local beach. When we were walking towards the entrance of the park, we wandered into a souvenir shop.…
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Diwang Pinay for academics
In 2009, I had the privilege of being part of a dynamic group of people that did research, wrote and acted in a play and built very strong basis for community-building and migrant worker organizing in New York City. That year, Diwang Pinay as a theatrical production was the first and most impactful way we…
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The Presentation of Dave in Everyday Life
Two nights ago, R and I, along with some friends in Portland, went to go see Dave Chappelle on his new comedy tour. It was my first time seeing a comedy show live. I’d followed Dave’s career from The Chappelle Show and was always inspired by the way he kept it real about race…
VFM 