LAS MAESTRAS
Cherríe Moraga
Celia Herrera Rodríguez
STAFF
Mariela Aguilar Raya, Ph.D.
Publicist & Program Coordinator
Mariela Aguilar Raya earned her Ph.D. in Hispanic Literatures and Languages in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UC, Santa Barbara where she is a Lecturer of Spanish language/cultural courses. Her research interests focus on women narratives written about/from the US and Mexico Border & decolonizing methodologies. Over her graduate studies, Mariela worked as a volunteer and fellow at Las Maestras Center for Xicana[x] Indigenous Thought, Art, and Social Practice where she served as an undergraduate research advisor and helped organized Poetry Talk Series with acclaimed Native American and Chicana[x] Poets entitled "Flor y Canto”.
John Jairo Valencia
Community Liaison/Program Assistant
John Jairo Valencia (they/he) grew up in La Puente and Boyle Heights, CA (Tongva territory) and is a queer xicanx/colombian multidisciplinary artist and writer. Among other things, John Jairo’s creative work has centered around illustration, poetry, and performance. They have been an avid student of Maestra Celia Herrera Rodríguez since being an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. As a current graduate student in the Chicana/o/x Studies Department at UCSB, they are passionate about exploring themes of ancestral memory, storytelling, decolonization, and Indigenous-rooted teaching pedagogies. As the Community Liaison/Program Assistant, John is excited to support LMC’s work in building community conciencia through the arts, activism, and conocimiento.
Research Assistants
MariaCarolina Sintura
Graduate Research Assistant
MariaCarolina is an international Ph.D. student from Colombia in the English Department at UCSB. Her research brings together the Legal Humanities, Critical University Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Women of Color Feminisms as she studies the discourses constructed around the figure of international students and scholars.
She is involved in feminist activism in her home country where, as a blogger and digital content creator, she first experienced the power of personal narrative for the emergence of critical conciencia. She has furthered her exploration of the creative critical in Maestra Moraga’s creative writing workshops as well as in her work as a teaching assistant for the course Writings by Radical Women of Color in Fall 2021.
Her research, her writing, her pedagogies, and her work as a graduate research assistant at LMC aim to explore and embody the radical possibilities of inhabiting the university as an international student who strives to study beyond the credentializing impulses of the institution and move towards relationality and solidaridad.