Irene Lara
Dr. Irene Lara has been a professor in the Department of Women’s Studies at San Diego State University since 2002. Her teaching, scholarship, and creative writing is inspired by Indigenous knowledge, Anzaldúan thought, Curandera praxis, and living in the Borderlands. In addition to publishing her work in venues such as Feminist Studies, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Chicana/Latina Studies, La Tolteca E-Zine, this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Frontlines, and the Chicana M(other)work Anthology, Irene co-edited Fleshing the Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous Women's Lives with Elisa Facio (2014) and the humanities-based textbook Women in Culture: An Intersectional Anthology of Gender and Women’s Studies (2016). She is also the faculty founder of the research and “femtoring” seminar “CuranderaScholarActivism” and the co-founder of “Panocha Pláticas: Healing Sex and Sexuality in Community,” a reproductive justice workshop/healing circle. Irene is a co-advisor for the campus AChA (Association of Chicana Activists) student organization and was recently honored as a San Diego activist in Chicana Tributes: Activist Women of the Civil Rights Movement, Stories for the New Generation (2017). She is working on Healers in the Borderlands, based on in-depth interviews she has conducted with thirty cultural producers, activists, and curanderas decolonizing the spirituality/sexuality split, and the co-edited anthology, Anzaldúan Pedagogies with Yolanda Venegas.
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A creative essay/performative poem/spiritual inquiry about birthing, mothering, creativity, and knowing.
This collaborative essay addresses the theories and practices of the “CuranderaScholarActivist” (CSA) femtoring seminar, a holistic undergraduate research program founded in 2009 by Professor Irene Lara through the Faculty-Student Mentoring Program at San Diego State University. Drawing on Anzaldúan autohistoria and other Chicana/Latina testimonio methods, the authors (four student participants and the faculty “femtor”) reflect on their experiences in the CSA program, which is geared toward first generation Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous women college students. They explore what it means to be a CuranderaScholarActivist and the potential of CSA praxis as a liberatory tool to decolonize and heal themselves and academia. The CSA’s vision of a decolonized academy insists that the production of knowledge be participatory for the purpose of social justice and collective liberation. Using feminist pedagogies and Chicana/o, Latina/o, and Indigenous theories, the CSA model addresses the need for further holistic femtoring models that acknowledge the bodymindspirithearts of students and faculty.
Published in Journal of International Women’s Studies. v. 9, n. 1 (November 2007): 80-98.
A creative essay/performative poem/spiritual inquiry about birthing, mothering, creativity, and knowing.
This collaborative essay addresses the theories and practices of the “CuranderaScholarActivist” (CSA) femtoring seminar, a holistic undergraduate research program founded in 2009 by Professor Irene Lara through the Faculty-Student Mentoring Program at San Diego State University. Drawing on Anzaldúan autohistoria and other Chicana/Latina testimonio methods, the authors (four student participants and the faculty “femtor”) reflect on their experiences in the CSA program, which is geared toward first generation Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous women college students. They explore what it means to be a CuranderaScholarActivist and the potential of CSA praxis as a liberatory tool to decolonize and heal themselves and academia. The CSA’s vision of a decolonized academy insists that the production of knowledge be participatory for the purpose of social justice and collective liberation. Using feminist pedagogies and Chicana/o, Latina/o, and Indigenous theories, the CSA model addresses the need for further holistic femtoring models that acknowledge the bodymindspirithearts of students and faculty.
Published in Journal of International Women’s Studies. v. 9, n. 1 (November 2007): 80-98.