“The Seeds: A Conversation with Dr. Roderick Ferguson” is the first of a three episode series “The Seeds, The Soil and the Cyber Garden” where we share our journey in teaching performance-based research with graduate students of color at CSULA that is rooted in the relational politic of Black Studies, Chicanx Studies, Latinx Studies and Queer and Feminist Studies. In the Spring of 2022, Danny and I had the privilege of working with students in his graduate seminar entitled “Interdisciplinary Seminar in Chicanx and Latinx Studies.” We thank our wonderful graduate student collaborators and colleagues: Nancy Ocana, Rosa Maldonando, Diana Ponce, Karla Hernandez, Gregory Esparza, Pedro Reyes, Susana Tapia, Felicia Mora, Pedro Martinez, Francisco Najera, Katherine Batanero, and Caroline Romero. This episode introduces: our intentions for the podcast series, an outlining of how we taught performance based-research as a pedagogy, and finally, features an example of our modeling of our pedagogical practice–an interview with our beloved professor, mentor, colleague and friend Dr. Roderick Ferguson. We share the conversation with Dr. Ferguson as an example of our key argument. We argue that one of the most crucial steps of teaching performance-based research in an ethnic studies and interdisciplinary course is modeling the very performance that we are asking students to consider.

The Seeds: Teaching Performance Based Research and Ethnic Studies

Today’s episode is entitled “The Soil: A Conversation with Dr. Anita Tijerina-Revilla.” It is the second of a three episode series “The Seeds, The Soil and the Cyber Garden” where we share our journey in teaching performance-based research with graduate students of color at CSULA that is rooted in the relational politic of Black Studies, Chicanx Studies, Latinx Studies and Queer and Feminist Studies. In the Spring of 2022, Danny and I had the privilege of working with students in his graduate seminar entitled “Interdisciplinary Seminar in Chicanx and Latinx Studies.” We thank our wonderful graduate student collaborators and colleagues: Nancy Ocana, Rosa Maldonando, Diana Ponce, Karla Hernandez, Gregory Esparza, Pedro Reyes, Susana Tapia, Felicia Mora, Pedro Martinez, Francisco Najera, Katherine Batanero, and Caroline Romero.

The Soil: Teaching Performance Based Research and Ethnic Studies

Welcome to Episode 3: “The Cyber Garden”; this episode is the third in our 3 part series on teaching performance-based research that is rooted in relational ethnic studies. This episode features excerpts from the wonderful and brilliant graduate students that we collaborated with to critically consider the way podcasting as a performance-based research activity can act as a kind of the cyber garden; in this episode you will hear excerpts from the wonderful podcasts that  Nancy Ocana, Rosa Maldonando, Diana Ponce, Karla Hernandez, Gregory Esparza, Pedro Reyes, Susana Tapia, Felicia Mora, Pedro Martinez, Francisco Najera, Katherine Batanero, and Caroline Romero completed themselves after having witnessed, studied and practiced performance-based research. This episode offers an example of a performative cyber garden where the seeds of critical and relational ethnic studies scholar-activism blossom through soil that has been cared for, nurtured and respected through spirit restoration

The Cyber Garden: Teaching Performance Based Research and Ethnic Studies

Thank you to everyone who listened to our trailer, we are inspired by your kind words and energized by each of you asking us when the first episode would stream. In an effort to introduce ourselves to you all, we are starting our podcast journey with interviewing each other. Today’s podcast is part 1 of an interview with my co-creator, co-host and above all my friend, Daniel Topete. Danny is also a caring teacher and scholar; he teaches Chicana/o Studies at CSULA and we met at the University of Minnesota,Twin Cities in Minneapolis, MN where we both completed our PhD's in American Studies. His research focuses on the importance of Chicanx popular culture and music in shaping new identities and possibilities for Chicanx and Latinx communities.

Getting To Know Us, Part 1

Eavesdrop on our conversation where we discuss how amistad and community constitute a response to anhedonia. We discuss amistad as part and parcel of decolonization, collective resistance and everyday life. By focusing on amistad, we see the way struggle is not just a spectacle, or an event, it is full of quotidian, everyday and mundane acts of friendship and care. Here, we also respond to community and welcome you all into a new set of conversations. Sending peace and love your way.

Anhedonia y Amistad Part 2

Join us for a conversation with Dr. Elliott Powell, a friend and author of the newly released book Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music. Here, we ask Dr. Powell about the significance of interracial solidarities, genealogies over trends, and the power of the spiritual and erotic when we consider music as a form of world making and connection. We’re inspired by Dr. Powell’s analysis of reading and listening to John Coltrane through the cultural politics of James Baldwin’s life and hope you enjoy. Sending peace, love and good vibrations!

Sounds From the Other Side and Interview with Elliot Powell

Our newest episode “Contemplating the Dangers of Essentializing Laborers, Part I” is a conversation with our brilliant colleagues and newest amistades Dr. Lilia Soto, Director and Associate Professor in Latina/o Studies at the University of Wyoming and author of Girlhood in the Borderlands: Mexican Teens Caught in the Crossroads of Migration and Dr. Salvador Zarate Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine whose published work you can find in Anthropology and Humanism, Aztlán: The Journal of Chicana/o Studies, and the Race and Capitalism Project. Along with Dr. Mario Obando, they are contributing authors to a wonderful forthcoming special issue entitled “The Enduring Dangers of Essentializing Labor and Laborers” in Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies co-edited by my dear and brilliant colleagues and amistades Dr. Abigail Rosas and Dr. Ana Rosas. We also invite you to join us on Tuesday, April 13th from 9am-3:30pm for a virtual event that will feature more extensive dialogues about our essays for the special issue. The event is an opportunity to learn more about the upcoming special issue of Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies that centers on the under-examined and dangerous erasures and rigors of essentializing laborers and labor across a diversity of contexts, locations, and relationships. It will feature a keynote presentation by Dr George Lipsitz, and moderated by Dr. Abigail Rosas, Associate Professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at CSULB and Dr. Ana Elizabeth Rosas, Associate Professor of Chicano and Latino Studies and History.

Contemplating the Dangers of Essentializing Laborers

We invite you to listen to our newest episode where we sit down with one of the editors of the new book, Transmovimientos: Latinx Queer Migrations, Bodies and Spaces, Dr. Eddy Alvarez Jr. and contributors Bamby Salcedo, José Manuel Santillana and Dr. Katherine Steelman. Our conversation centers on the significance of healing as an in-roads into the process of editing and writing such a critical intervention into the fields of Chicanx and Latinx Studies. Sending peace and love your way. Episode is now streaming.

"Transformative Manifesting:"

Episode contemplates a post-9/11 historical framework to studying the legacies of 1492 in the Americas and Indigenous decolonial thought and interfaces that unsettle the destruction of racialized and Indigenous communities as a result of genocide, ethnocide, colonialism and slavery.

Destruction

Episode contemplates the erotic and gendered histories that we can decolonialize colonial domination, morality and erasure that allow us to arrive at the sacred cosmologies of pre-Columbian life.

Sacredness

Episode contemplates neocolonial and transtemporal fantasies of Mesoamerican and Central American culture and arrives at the beauty of decolonial storytelling to imagine wondrous and generative futures and conceptualizations of racialized and Indigenous life.

Fantasy

Episode 4 contemplates the historic entanglements of power in the hemisphere and the interoceanic diasporas that are forged within, beyond and against power

Entanglement

Episode 5 contemplates the spatial politics of Jim Crow on Black women’s bodies and also in the labor of Black and Indigenous Central Americans

Space

Episode 6 contemplates the ways racialized communities are scripted against one another and as such, preserve their dignity and integrity in finding dissent together

Preservation

In this episode we contemplate witnessing and imagining colonial history by challenging the what Raoul Peck calls “confidence of ignorance” and build collective and relational histories and ties between racialized communities

Confidence

In this episode, we contemplate amor as a form of decolonial study and witnessing that works against the capitalist and often genocidal norms of western culture.

Amor

This episode brings together the work of Gloria Anzaldúa and Raoul Peck to contemplate our luz (light) in collective witnessing and healing. Episode concludes our effort in season 3 to define the holistic possibility of public pedagogies in ethnic studies.

A Reflection on “The Seeds, The Soil, and the Cyber Garden” Series

A reminder that if you ever feel stuck... from the mud, grows the lotus. 
El Viento puede aclarar nuestra vista, pero a veces las nubes pueden dejar nos algo bello con su despedida.

“The Alchemist Manifesto: A Podcast with Mario Obando and Daniel Topete” is dedicated to two friends holding space and making time to have holistic and humanizing pláticas and charlas with the aim of alchemizing our individual experiences into shared healing and wisdom. The amistad that produces this podcast emerges from our shared commitment to social justice, as teachers and scholars in the fields of critical and relational ethnic studies, and of course, our creative and everyday efforts to imagine better worlds with our loved ones, communities and spirits.

The Alchemist Manifesto Podcast

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