El periodista Rafael Díaz Torres escribió un gran artículo de fondo en el que discute el lenguaje discriminatorio de dos resoluciones de felicitaciones pasadas por la Asamblea Legislativa. Ambas resoluciones felicitaban a las Selecciones Nacionales de Baloncesto por haber ganado oro en el baloncesto Panamericano. En su artículo, Díaz Torres cita de mi última columna, “12 baloncelistas: Disparidades por género en el básquet puertorriqueño”. Puede leer el reportaje oprimiendo el enlace arriba (el artículo sólo está disponible en inglés).

I was recently interviewed for the show “Periodismo Libre” of the Center for Freedom of the Press. The interview, which was about media literacy and sports, will air on Monday November 7^th at 6:00 pm Puerto Rico time (5:00 pm ET) through Radio Activa. You can listen in by clicking on the link posted above. The interview, of course, is in Spanish.

Este pasado 1ero de octubre de 2011, tuve la oportunidad de presentar remotamente resultados parciales de mi tesis doctoral en el 43 Congreso Anual de la Asociación Internacional de Alfabetización Visual. El título de la presentación era: “After Further Review”: Utilizing Sports Media to Assess Visual Literacy.

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Recently, the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Communications of the Universidad Metropolitana de Puerto Rico (UMet) launched their new digital zine Cruce. Cruce, as their tagline aptly says, is a digital publication dedicated to contemporary sociocultural critique. I am happy to announce that the editorial board at Cruce invited me to be one of their columnists. My articles will be published once a month and they will be dedicated to analyzing the SportsWorld from a sociocultural, political, and economic standpoint. My first column was published August 29th, 2011.

http://www.fims.uwo.ca/mit/courses/3000/mit3440g.htm

Me alegra poder decir que en el semestre de invierno del 2011 enseñaré, por primera vez, un curso nuevo propuesto y desarrollado completamente por mí. El curso se titula, en inglés, “After Further Review”: Sports, Media, and Society y es un curso de tercer año en la especialidad de Medios, Información y Tecnología (MIT) de la Universidad de Western Ontario. La clase se dividirá en dos áreas principales: 1) el negocio y la industria de la cobertura mediática de los deportes y 2) asuntos relacionados a las políticas de la identidad (raza, sexualidad, género, nación, etc) en la cobertura mediática de los deportes. Para más información, oprima el enlace superior.

The August edition of the Puerto Rican newspaper Diálogo included an interview of postcolonial theorist Ngugi wa Thiong’o written by Selma Feliciano-Arroyo and me. Unfortunately, the version published differs from the one we submitted. The person in charge of editing the piece made a series of changes which, frankly, I think were not appropriate. One of those changes, for example, was the title. Our original title, “Collapsing linguistic hierarchies: An interview with Ngugi wa Thiong’o”, was directly related to Ngugi’s main argument in his Keynote Address at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus. The new title “Ngugi wa Thiong’o: Believer in Multilingualism” is an abstract and general title that lacks the political connotation of Ngugi’s message. Also, there were a series of changes in terms of reorganization of the article that broke the flow and coherence of our introduction. This is why I feel compelled to publish here the original version (in Spanish; English to follow later).

Today, May 27th 2009, I completed the process of my comprehensive examinations, thank God. I am now, officially, a Ph.D. Candidate in Media Studies. I can’t begin to explain what this means to me. I would like to thank my committee for helping me with my reading list and for giving me a rigorous and fair examination.

…. for a Graduate Student Teaching Award! Unfortunately, I did not win, but I am still proud to have been nominated. These nominations are submitted by the students in our tutorials, so that means that at least one student was satisfied with the way I taught the tutorial. Thanks to whoever thought enough of me to nominate me!