Research

[ID: The Spring 2003, Number 101 issue of Transgender Tapestry that looks like a black&white composition notebook. There is a butch femme with blue-gray hair. There is a yellow sticky-note on the notebook that says, “State U. called. Wants TG 101 presentation for intro psychology class. Run more copies of TranSTap handouts!!”]

I work in the fields of Filipinx Studies, Asian American Studies, Disability Studies, Queer and Feminist Theory, and Poetics. My current book project, Dismantle Me: Queer, Mad, and Anti-Imperialist Filipinx Poetry, explores the radical tradition of Filipinx poetics practiced by queer, trans, mad, and disabled artists. I use queer and trans of color analyses, paying close attention to the ways cultural workers meld art and critical theory to imagine and materialize other worlds.

In addition, I am working on a project investigating queer and Asian American print cultures, using primary sources from the Transgender Studies archive at the University of Victoria, BC and the Ethnic Studies library at the University of California, Berkeley. I examine how zines, magazines, pamphlets, chapbooks, and community newspapers produce alternative public cultures where non-normative identities and relationalities coalesce.

Currently, my research and literary criticism have been published in:

  • “The Avant-Garde as Ecopoetics: Experimental Landscapes of Filipinx Diasporic Poetry,” Amerasia Journal (2024)

  • (Reprint) “White Space, Banana Ketchup, and Karaoke: A Review of Kimberly Alidio’s After projects the resound,” The Weird Sister Collection (2024)

  • “Transoceanic Crossings and the Philippine-American War,” Asian American x LatinX Critical & Digital Studies (2023)

  • “this tender gouge: On Angela Peñaredondo’s ‘nature felt but never apprehended, ’” The Los Angeles Review of Books (2023)

  • “Unthinkable Potentials: The Filipinx Avant-Garde Tradition in Kimberly Alidio’s : once teeth bones coral :,” The Bind (2021)

  • “A Breath, A Beat: A Review of Kay Ulanday Barrett’s More Than Organs,” The Asian American Literary Review (2020)

  • “Toward a Filipinx Method: Queer of Color Critique and QTGNC Mobilization in Mark Aguhar’s Poetics,” The Velvet Light Trap (2020)

  • “ ‘I’d Rather Be Beautiful Than Male:’ Remembering the Radical Art of Mark Aguhar,” VICE (2018)

[ID: Vol. 2, Issue 2 of Kalayaan International: Progressive Filipino Monthly. There is an illustration of a man and woman standing next to each other, their fists raised to form a triangle. Between them is a small triangle with the “Ka” babayin inside. The top reads “Power Through Unity” while the bottom reads “Unity Through Struggle.”]