Summaries and Links to Select Talks and Public Presentations
Overview of presentation as Featured Speaker at the Mythologium Conference, 2021: “Held Embrujadas: Reading Mesoamerican Myths of Femininity as a Radical Response to Contemporary Colonialism”
This paper presents a portion of my doctoral research on the cycles of waste land and borderland spaces in Mesoamerican myth. I will share an example of how an unusual reading of key Mesoamerican myths helps us move through collective shadow spaces (waste lands) into periods of reorientation (borderlands) to the whole in order to regenerate culturally and environmentally.
This exploration focuses on the critical role of feminine figures in Mesoamerican myth, which are often direly misunderstood by the Western mind. These strange, beautiful/hideous, death-adorned maternal figures shapeshift throughout myths and over time but they always serve a similar purpose: To guide us through our necessary death/life cycles and into regeneration of our collective psyche and landscape. Cultivating a deep understanding of the waste land/borderlands motif and the “dark” feminine figures at the heart of the Mesoamerican worldview is more than just an exciting mythological adventure, it is part of a radical approach to “decolonizing” the American mind.
As an educator and community organizer I use these narratives to combat the pervasive ideologies of racism, patriarchy, and American exceptionalism. I will share how I read and teach Mesoamerican femininity as a piece of a greater conversation of “Corn Consciousness,” a social philosophy I have adapted using and honoring poorly understood Indigenous epistemologies. I use these teachings in community and organizations as a guide to consciously stepping out of a hyper-masculinized mentality and into a feral feminine alignment to explore, wade through, and emerge reoriented to our collective spaces.
Watch Here: Held Embrujadas: Reading Mesoamerican Myths of Femininity as a Radical Response to Contemporary Colonialism
Overview of presentation from Popular Culture Association Conference, 2018: “Corn, Cowboys, and Coatlicue: The Unrecognized Contributions of Mexico to United States Culture”
My paper argues that borderlands are a unique space where new ideas and practices are generated that contribute directly to the development of culture. Examining the Mexican-United States borderlands, this paper traces how the literature, symbols, and stories born in borderlands contribute to United States culture. Employing a mythological lens, I briefly trace the symbols of corn, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and Aztec sacrificial gods from ancient Mexico into modern day U.S. Through these symbols I show how distinctly Mexican beliefs have evolved in the borderlands and ultimately opened up new avenues of thinking, creativity, and spirituality that did not exist previously in the United States. The objective of this paper is to both demonstrate the unique contribution of Mexican practices and beliefs to the dominant culture of the United States and also to detail how the exchanges that happen in borderlands are critical to re-imagining these ideas in a way that makes them feel native and adapted to a new culture.
This paper addresses two intellectual questions that are of primary import to contemporary American culture. First: Is there a way to defend immigration not as a human rights issue, but as a matter of recognizing the deep contribution of immigrants to US culture? (My answer, focusing particularly on Mexican migrant communities is a convincing "Yes!"). And second: What does it mean to live in a "borderlands space," as I argue our increasingly ethnically mixed country is; how does the term "borderlands" apply to all of the US now; and what are tools we can use to embrace and thrive amidst this shift?
My paper seeks new responses to old questions of postcolonial critique by breaking out of standard postmodern analysis and suggesting that the way to understand the immigrant contribution to the United States is to look to carefully delve into them. My paper is one piece of a greater project that seeks to help recover a sense of the intrinsic value of Mexican culture through analyzing modern and ancient narrative and ritual practices in terms of their social value, then demonstrating how that social value is complementary and relevant to popular American culture. This is an ideological approach grounded as much in praxis as theory; carefully understanding the role of the immigrant primarily as contributor to our shared social fabric and cultural values works as a tool to immediately and effectively reframe what our popular culture is and how we can more effectively participate it honoring differing beliefs while also recognizing the commonality of unsuspected shared beliefs.
(Full paper available in the “Essays” section of this website)
Mythologium 2023, Overview of Upcoming Presentation: “A Heart Strong Enough to Kill”
In 2013, in the midst of a traditional Mayan ritual of the moon calendar, a feminine voice clapped through the clouds and loudly commanded me to nurture a “heart strong enough to kill.” The message terrified me. It was direct, almost a command, and it was not human. And I could not ignore it. Over time, I understood that the message was not literal, but an invitation to understand the ferocity of love that existed at the heart of ancient Mesoamerican culture.
Pursuing an understanding of love - and operating from the heart as a drive not only to battle but to revolution - I wrote an unusual dissertation that in part compared classical Western philosophical notions of love and heart to Aztec understanding of love as impetus for cultural change. The first half of this presentation will briefly summarize my unusual reading of the Myth of Quetzalcoatl as laid out in my 2020 dissertation "A Love Strong Enough to Kill." Through this discussion, I hope to cultivate an understanding of the function of love as terminating force.
The second half of this presentation explores how adopting the philosophy of the fierce heart eventually shifted my entire life. My goal in this section is to begin to elucidate and define what has for me become a life philosophy: A reinvigoration of an almost lost feminine energy and archetype that clears wastelands and properly ends worlds. I hope to display a sense of how Mesoamerican mythology and Western philosophy converge into a radical re-understanding of love and femininity.
Link to my very first conference presentation and overview of my approach to decolonizing narrative work in non profit organizations