Being less silent: exceeding the safe confines of U.S. academic rightness

I try to listen to various podcasts, read blogs, and watch YouTube channels and vlogs in order to supplement, and sometimes to correct or exceed, the reading I do in my doctoral studies as much as possible. The best work, I think, includes collaborations led by immigrant and immigration-focused creators and activists, like Chat It …

“Adjuncts: Underpaid, Overworked and Mobilizing on International Women’s Day” (article for Left Voice)

I just published an article for Left Voice, a progressive news source where several of my friends and colleagues from the GC collaborate to dig in to news that affects us as workers, students, citizens, and human beings. So proud to offer my services again! Here's the link, and here's the text below... In “Living …

Is love an emotion or an act?: White nationalism as a complicating complement to Bakhtin’s philosophy

Is love an emotion or an act? I recently asked this in a student working group where we discuss topics including whether men have a right to contribute to the shaping of public discourse about sexual harassment (appropriate as the #MeToo movement has emerged to inspire and to generate new questions) and how community college students can …

“Zines as creative resistance”: authoring the world, authoring ourselves

The Graduate Center library and first-floor hallways have spaces for exhibitions of art by artists with a variety of commitments and visions, some of which are beautiful, raw, terrifying, playful, and sometimes – in my favorite cases – all of the above. Below I've collected a group of images of zines which explore topics of race, queer …

Feminist Friday: fairy tales

A few months ago, I saw this poster on the New York subway, part of an art initiative which I generally embrace: The poem "A Name" was written by Ada Limón, a Californian poet whose work is featured in feminist collections and conferences. This is the text: A Name When Eve walked among the animals …

Is a conversation action?: bell hooks and theory for healing and liberation

A politically conscious and active friend of mine teaches in an early college program in Queens, where teenagers learn from him about U.S. history and great literature. This weekend, we chatted a bit about his work, how wonderful and inspiring it can be, as well as how uncertain in terms of greater consequences. My friend …

The eye in the sky and “low-status” domestic workers

Not long ago, I watched a PBS Frontline video called "Rape on the Night Shift," an expose delving into the abuse of and violence, often by their own supervisors, against female immigrants who work as janitors for poor wages in buildings that I would wager the majority of Americans have frequented for one reason or another. One …

Capturing, captivated by the feminine mystique

Spoiler alert: I will not reference Betty Friedan's book in this post (click here for free PDF) though it's on my short list for the week. I am listening to Satellite by Guster while I write this as well. More on this... I was walking on Newbury Street in Boston, MA last week, a good spot for …

“Research” and the Lammily doll

I am digging this new Lammily doll. Created not by Mattel but by an individual named Nickolay Lamm, the doll has the dimensions of an “average” 19-year-old and comes with “cellulite, acne, and scar stickers.” A now-famous video shows 2nd graders (mostly girls, though there’s also a boy in there) in Pittsburg responding to the …

bell hooks, academia, and the reassurance of uncertainty

This afternoon I went to a panel discussion at The New School which included bell hooks, a well-known black scholar and educator who explores race, class, gender, sexuality, language, representation, and other topics in her poetry, essays, books, and speaking engagements around the world. She’s currently the scholar-in-residence at The New School, and, having read …