Brown Bag Talk: Dr. Alex Allweiss

“They don’t want to see us as developed”: Race, coloniality, and Chuj youth

This talk centers moments—global, (trans)national, and local—that illustrate the ways race and modern/colonial processes and logics operate in and through Guatemala, the Chuj nation, and Chuj youth’s lives, organizing work, and educational spaces. Drawing on 18-months of ethnographic research with Chuj youth and educators, I argue that education, development, and indigenous youth are at once targets of racialized colonial logics and important sites of decolonial resistance. Building on decolonial theories, I center Chuj youth’s insights into the contours of racialized modern/colonial processes and bring them into conversation with global, state, and media discourses to highlight the complex material and corporeal implications of racialized colonial frameworks. Ultimately, I contend that Chuj youth provide insights and lessons into the impacts of these modern/colonial processes and decolonial possibilities.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Alex Allweiss is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Her interdisciplinary research considers the transformative possibilities of youth-centered and anti-/de-colonial educational spaces and frameworks in dismantling entrenched colonial and white supremacist social and political systems globally. Her recent research draws on more than 18-months of multi-sited, transnational ethnographic and participatory fieldwork and examines the decolonial organizing and educational work of indigenous Maya Chuj youth and educators in Guatemala and the United States. This project builds on her previous research in both these countries and was funded by the John and Tashia F. Morgridge Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate fellowship, the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship, and the American Association of University Women’s American Dissertation Fellowship. She received a joint Ph.D. (2018) in Educational Policy Studies and Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also holds an M.A. in Education Policy Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a B.A. in International Relations with a minor in Africa in the New World from Tufts University. Prior to graduate school, she was a middle school and high school teacher in Guatemala.

Zoom link: https://msu.zoom.us/j/673462022