Performing Nahua Rhetorics For Civic Engagement

Mexicantown, Detroit Mural
Mexicantown, Detroit Mural

This chapter appears in the first edited collection on teaching Indigenous rhetorics, edited by Lisa King, Joyce-Rain Anderson, and Rose Gubele.  In it, I bring together Indigenous theories of space and civic engagement through my experiences teaching with the Ford Foundation’s Difficult Dialogues initiative. I offer the Nahua concept of In Ixtli in Yollotl as a model of inquiry for debates on social justice, and I discuss the difficulties of engaging an Indigenous model in this way from a pedagogical and instructional standpoint. The text  will be supplemented by a website that will host teaching materials from the authors.