BIPOC Alliances: Building Communities and Curricula

 

Book Description:

BIPOC Alliances: Building Communities and Curricula is a collection of reflective experiences that confront, challenge, and resist hegemonic academic canons. BIPOC perspectives are often scarce in scholarly academic venues and curriculum. This edited book is a curated collection of interdisciplinary, underrepresented voices, and lived experiences through critical methodologies for empowerment (Reilly & Lippard, 2018). Gloria Anzaldu a's (2015) autohistoria-teorí a is a lens for decolonizing and theorizing of one's own experiences, historical contexts, knowledge, and performances through creative acts, curriculum, and writing. Gloria Anzaldu a coined, autohistoria-teorí a, a feminist writing practice of testimonio as a way to create self-knowledge, belonging, and to bridge collaborative spaces through self-empowerment. Anzaldu a encouraged us to focus towards social change through our testimonios and art, “[t]he healing images and narratives we imagine will eventually materialize” (Anzaldu a & Keating, 2009, p. 247).

For this collection, we use lived experience or testimonios as an approach, a method, to conduct research and to bear witness to learners and one's own experiences (Reyes & Rodrí guez, 2012). Maxine Greene's (1995) concept of an emancipated pedagogy merges art, culture, and history as one education that empowers students with Gloria Anzaldu a's (2015) autohistoria-teorí a to re-imagine individual and collective inclusion by allowing students “... to read and to name, to write and to rewrite their own lived worlds” (Greene, 1995, pp. 147). Greene and Anzaldu a reach beyond theorizing and creating curriculum for awareness.

Author Bio:

Dra. Leslie C. Sotomayor II, is an artist, curator, and educator. Her dual Ph.Ds in Art Education and Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies from The Pennsylvania State University. Sotomayor focuses on Gloria Anzaldúa's theory of conocimiento and autohistoria-teoría, a feminist writing practice of theorizing one's experiences as transformative acts to guide her teaching methodology and curate curriculum for empowerment. She has curated numerous art exhibitions and publications including her book Teaching In/Between: Curating Educational Spaces with Autohistoria-teoría and Conocimiento (Vernon, 2022) and co-edited book, BIPOC Alliances: Building Communities and Curricula. (Information Age Press, 2022).  Her scholarship, research, and curating as art embrace culturally responsive critical reflections for transformations.  Currently, Sotomayor is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Women's and Gender Studies program at Texas Tech University.