Statement of Research interests

I specialize in Chicanx literature, history, and culture, and am interested in narratives and genres of anti-colonial resistance throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. My dissertation examines the ways in which Chicanx and Latinx communities make use of punk—as a genre, a methodology, and a praxis—to perform and encourage socio-cultural resistance against systems of oppression.

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

My primary goals as an educator are to guide students toward becoming critically engaged civic participants, to identify the patterns and intersections of settler-colonial structures in the present, and to develop a praxis with which to imagine and enact alternative futures. I also strive to facilitate students’ growth in their own writing practices by providing strategies for individual development, getting past writer’s block, and dispelling the myth of impostor syndrome.

Other Commitments

This semester I’m the teaching assistant for a class on Houston writers and artists, where we take field trips to multiple arts and cultural spaces around the city to consider how the landscape itself has shaped these cultural productions. I am also a Writing Coach for FWIS 100. My favorite pastime is Texas-sized road trips. You will often find me at punk shows conducting research for my dissertation.

Summary