Dr. cárdenas is the director of the Critical Realities Studio, a hybrid studio/lab that uses multiple realities, in art, to address critical global issues including climate change, racism and gendered violence. Learn more about the studio here: https://criticalrealities.sites.ucsc.edu/
Games as art and activism, algorithmic analysis, interactive narrative, science fiction, XR/VR/AR, alternate reality games, practice-based research, networked performance, trans of color poetics, queer of color critique, decolonization.
Teaching Philosophy
I love teaching because I always learn so much from my students. I learned about pedagogy, or how to teach, by reading the work of people like women of color feminist bell hooks and Brazilian political artist Augusto Boal. My teaching centers dialog, creative practice and collaboration. I understand the university as a site of political struggle. The university is a place created through colonial theft of land, where racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia are perpetuated, but we can all work to change that. My classes are grounded in decolonial, queer, transfeminist values, where we learn about these social dynamics and how to use art to intervene into them. I will work to facilitate a space that we co-create together where everyone is empowered to speak. My grading practices focus on self-assessment, as I want to move away from carceral models of education and towards abolitionist futures.