Employee

Ismael Illescas is a scholar and professor of Ethnic Studies at Chabot College and teaches at Santa Rita Jail through the RISE Program. He holds a Ph.D. in Latin American and Latino Studies from UC Santa Cruz, a B.A. in Sociology from UC Santa Barbara, and an A.A. from Santa Monica College. His research and teaching make visible how historically oppressed and aggrieved people resist abuses of power and build new ways of thinking and being in the world. At Chabot, he teaches Intro to Ethnic Studies, Intro to Latinx Studies, and Chicanx/Latinx Expressive Cultures and Resistance. His research examines how Black and Latinx youths produce new cultural identities, social relationships, and fugitive spaces of urban collectivity and empowerment through graffiti and street art. He has published in Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies and is working on a book manuscript entitled Fugitivity and Creative Rebellion: Black and Latinx Graffiti Writers in Los Angeles.