Motivation to Teach Social Action:
I am excited about participating in the Summer '27 Institute on Teaching Social Action because it offers an opportunity to deepen the connection between community-engaged scholarship, public humanities, and social action pedagogy. My teaching has consistently centered storytelling, participatory art, and reciprocal collaboration with immigrant communities, and I am currently developing a course that asks students to move beyond studying social issues toward contributing ethically to community-based initiatives.
My proposed course, Reading and Writing the Archive: Illustrating the Humanizing Deportation Project, invites students to work alongside storytellers featured in the Humanizing Deportation archive by creating digital narratives and portraits that become part of a larger public archive and bi-coastal mural project. While the course already incorporates experiential learning and public scholarship, I hope the Institute will help me more intentionally scaffold collective action, coalition-building, reflection, and campaign design so that students can connect archival work with broader movements for immigrant justice.
I am particularly interested in learning how to design meaningful social action assignments that are ethically grounded, community accountable, and sustainable beyond the semester. I also look forward to joining a community of educators committed to justice-centered teaching, exchanging ideas across disciplines, and developing strategies that empower students to recognize themselves as engaged scholars, artists, and civic participants.
Course Description:
Empty AI Block
Taught By:
Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana
Assistant Professor
Black and Latino Studies
Baruch College City University of New York
Read profile here.