Category: Sociologizing
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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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Summer 2020: Final Project Round Up
I endeavor to create a class for my students that will inspire and motivate them to create projects that extend the life of the sociology we learn in class, to the world beyond our class. Whether that class is in a physical room or online (because The ‘Rona), I have tried my very best to […]
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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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Motherland
I just finished watching this really heartbreakingly real documentary called Motherland on POV/PBS. I started and stopped and started it again about 5 times because I was crying my eyes out. I’m not exactly sure what to write about but I am feeling compelled to think through writing. There’s no context or interviews or voiceover. Throughout […]
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How to Raise Feminist Kids
A New York Times published a piece called, “How to Raise a Feminist SonHow to Raise a Feminist Son” written by Claire Cain Miller popped up on my Facebook feed a couple of days. And of course, since the arrival of my son (my partner and I chose to keep the sex of our baby secret until […]
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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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On Post-Colonial Rage and Not Being Mad at Big Brother aka US Imperialism
First of all, let me be CRYSTAL CLEAR, President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” is unconscionable. Thousands of people and innocent bystanders have been slain in the name of “cleaning up” the Philippines. Without due process, the Philippine National Police have become the prosecutor, judge, jury and executor of Filipinos who may or may […]
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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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