Date: April 17, 2024
Time: 4:00pm-6:00pm (Arizona Time)
Location: World of Words, EDUC 453
Zoom Link: Register HERE

Please join us for a presentation and discussion by Dr. Claudia Cervantes-Soon, “Futurity Literacies from the Borderlands: Fugitivity, Border Thinking, and a World Otherwise” on April 17, 2024, from 4-6pm in the Worlds of Words, EDUC, 453 or via zoom. 

This event is planned in conjunction with the Spring 2024 graduate seminar, SCCT 510: Borderlands Lab: Pedagogy, Poetics and Practice led by Professors Carol Brochin and Sandra Soto. This free event is sponsored by the Graduate Program in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory, the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry and the Department of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona and is open to students, staff, faculty, and community members. 

Talk abstract: Futurity literacies entail the skill to analyze and interpret present-day realities while envisioning potential futures, navigating through various complexities of obstacles, power dynamics, and opportunities that could influence the paths ahead. They encompass the capacity to reimagine the future through creative thinking, hopeful analysis, courageous initiatives, and the integration of diverse literacies. Drawing on decolonial theory and recent research with Latine/x transnational and/or Indigenous  communities, Cervantes-Soon will discuss the ways in which those living at the margins deploy futurity literacies as part of their daily lives, with transformative, decolonizing, and visionary potential.

Dr. Cervantes-Soon is an Associate Professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Her work seeks to recognize the intersectional identities and subaltern knowledges that are often ignored by dominant discourses about minoritized and border/transborder communities. Her research focuses on two broad areas of inquiry: 1) Equity and social justice in bilingual education, and 2) Borderlands/transborder Mexicana/Latina youth literacies and critical pedagogies. Cervantes-Soon's is also the author of "Juárez Girls Rising: Transformative Education of Times of Dystopia," which received a 2017 Critics' Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association, and a 2017 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems, one of the most important book awards in the social sciences.