Congratulations to la Doctora Iris Viveros Avendaño, who on Thursday, June 8 presented a brilliant lecture on her dissertation "Feminista Dance Disruptions in Fandango Temporalities." Starting from her position as a bailadora on the tarima - a temporal and conceptual space where the collective memory of women gathers in the presence of community – Iris wove a narrative that took us from Veracruz to Seattle and back through the transnational connections forged by the practices of the Seattle Fandango Project. Viveros Avendaño argues that “Fandango becomes a catalyst for expanding critical consciousness by building community across borders, which provides a foundation for strategically deploying technologies that counter state violence in Mexico and the US.” Viveros Avendaño also provided evidence of the importance of the Grupo Cultural Oaxaqueño as precursors of the Seattle Fandango Project.
As a committee member remarked: this was a dissertation where the author does not only write about community, but brings in the community with her; the lecture was preceded and it ended with members of the Seattle Fandango Project demonstrating the way they practice radical relational listening and music making. These few lines do not do justice to the complexities this dissertation explored in fields from sound studies to feminist theory, from immigrant indigeneity to transborder politics. This dissertation will make major contributions to the practice and the literature in these fields.
We also congratulate Iris on her forthcoming co-authored book (with Evelyn Muthama and Roxana Chiappa): The different paths of transnational academics from the global south. Routledge, spring of 2024.
Again, felicitaciones!
angela b ginorio Michelle Habell-Pallán
Emerita GWSS UW-Seattle Professor GWSS UW-Seattle