As a ‘day job,’ I teach at Michigan State University . Although I rarely engage with the same people in both worlds, my work as a teacher and intellectual worker parallels the visual work that I do with Justseeds. As part of my intellectual labor, I spend quite a bit of time lecturing at other univerisities and conferences. This spring I have been at Rutgers, Notre Dame and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as have a half-dozen other talks scheduled before June. Since I write mostly on Indigenous and Chicana/o anti-colonialism and its relationship to art, I thought that I would start keeping the Justseeds community up on my whereabouts and intellectual projects. In fact, I may even begin posting PDFs of my droll academic writings to the Blog.
To start off, I’d like to let y’all know that I’ll be participating this Saturday in the Newberry Seminar in Borderlands and Latino Studies. According to their website, the ‘Newberry offers highly acclaimed programs for serious readers: fellowships for scholars, seminars for undergraduates, professional development activities for teachers, and a variety of seminars, lectures, and workshops.’ The Borderlands Seminar allows attendees (anyone who wants to show up) the opportunity to read and comments on participant’s writing. It is an interesting exercise, I believe, in a form of egalitarian dialogue and intellectual debate. Alongside other professors and graduate students, I will be workshoping my paper entitled ‘Migración y Movimiento: Aztlán in Chicana/o Art and Visual Culture.’
And then maybe I’ll go get some vegan eats at the Chicago Diner. Yummmmmm.