Toward Literacies of Agency: Centering Transnational and Transfronterizx Communities and Their Knowledges

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

In this symposium, four papers explore agency and literacy practices (Freire, 1970) in diverse borderlands contexts to address the challenges facing transnational and transfronterizx communities. These papers focus on the experiences of racialized bi/multilingual students, transfronterizx children and commuters, and Latinx transnational families amidst COVID-19. Emphasizing multivoiced, borderlands, and sociocultural literacies, the papers investigate how community practices foster belonging, agency, and resistance across transnational and transfronterizx contexts. Theoretical frameworks, including heteroglossia, borderlands biliteracies, Chicana feminist epistemology, and multi-sited sensibility, underpin the analyses. The symposium invites researchers, practitioners, community organizers, and other stakeholders to envision learning spaces emancipated from racial injustice – emphasizing humanizing practices and frameworks centered on transnational and transfronterizx knowledges that disrupt and transform their current sociopolitical conditions.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Writing and Literacies

Chair

• Alicia Rusoja, University of California - Davis

Papers

• Youth Podcasting as Sonic Heteroglossia: Exploring Translingual Youths’ Multi-Voiced Poetics of Resistance - Cati V. de los Rios, University of California - Berkeley; Isaac Alejandro Felix, University of California - Berkeley; Yared Portillo, University of California - Berkeley

• Borderlands Childhoods: Exploring Transfronterizx Children’s Fotografías - Idalia Nunez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Tran Templeton, Teachers College, Columbia University

• "Espérate, Vamos a Echar Chisme": Latinx Immigrants Co-Designing Participatory Action Research Through Communal Research Literacies - Alicia Rusoja, University of California - Davis; Yared Portillo, University of California - Berkeley; Olivia Vazquez Ponce, Belmont Charter High School

• ¿Y Qué Tal la Línea? Transfronterizx Commuter Literacies at the Tijuana–San Diego Border Region - Isaac Alejandro Felix, University of California - Berkeley

Discussant

• Maria Paula Ghiso, Teachers College, Columbia University