Kuwentuhan from the Archive

This episode brings together Filipina/o/x trained in history talking through the importance of history, historians and the archive for a Critical Filipinx Studies.

Dr. Stef Lira received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Irvine in Latin American History where she completed her dissertation “Mercurial Masculinities: Indigenous and Chinese Laborers in the Early Modern Philippines.” Dr. Lira’s research focused on the impact of Spanish colonization on the Philippines, particularly the formation of racial and gendered ideologies within colonial labor sites. Her work traced the relationship between racial and gendered ideas and racist labor exploitation via local laws and punitive expulsion orders. She is an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at Long Beach City College. Outside of the college, Dr. Lira works with non-profits and grassroots Filipino organizations that work to protect the rights of working class Filipino communities in Southern California. She is the Education Officer for Gabriela South Bay, a Filipino women's organization that fights for the rights and welfare of Filipino women and families. Through her community work, she further grounds her pedagogical principles in her teachings: History is not made by great men, but by the efforts and struggles of everyday people.

Dr. Bernard James Remollino is a 1.5-generation undocumented Filipinx American from Manila. He earned his Ph.D. in U.S. History from UCLA in 2022 for his research on histories of Filipinx American popular culture, labor, and migration in the early 20th century. Dr. Remollino is an Associate Professor of Asian and Pacific American History at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, CA, where he mentors AAPI students as part of the college’s Empowering Positive Initiatives for Change (EPIC) program. He is also currently engaged in a book project examining transpacific interwar Filipinx popular cultures and their influence on U.S. politics, society, and empire from the 1910s to the 1950s. He is a Managing Editor and Senior Staff Writer for Mahalaya newspaper, a free monthly print news publication based in San Francisco sharing Filipinx American stories through solidarity journalism. Dr. Remollino lives in San Francisco and enjoys teaching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, getting tattooed, and riding motorcycles in his spare time.

Abby Gayle Reynoso Principe is a first-generation Filipina American born and raised in Vallejo, California. Abby received her AA-T in History from Napa Valley College and her BA in History from UC Davis with minors in Education and Asian American Studies. She is now an incoming PhD student in History at UC Riverside, with the desire to center her research around preserving kwentuhans (the art of storytelling), especially within the Filipino farm labor movement in the 1960s. Abby is a former lead intern for the Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies from 2019 to early 2020. Her undergraduate research can be found under the Bulosan Center Working Paper series titled, “The World is Watching: the Meeting that Ended a Movement and Sparked a Revolution.”

 Since graduating from UC Davis, Principe is implementing kwentuhans, community, and her love for coffee to run Masaya Kapé, a coffee pop-up that celebrates these pillars instilled in her through the work of the Bulosan Center and Filipina/o/x Studies.