Kervin teaches cultural studies at DLSU - MANILA
BiographyJose Kervin Cesar B. Calabias is an Igorot Kankana-ey scholar from Baguio City, Philippines. He is an associate professorial lecturer at the Department of Literature at De La Salle University in Manila and managing editor of Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance. He currently serves as a Commissioner for Languages of Northern Cultural Communities under the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino. He has a PhD in Cultural Studies from Lingnan University Hong Kong where he received the Hong Kong Ph.D. Fellowship Scheme and the Belt and Road Scholarship awards. His research areas and publications examine the intersections of contemporary Igorot indigeneity, activism, and social media.Get in touch →
DissertationChallenging Domesticity, Mobilizing Indigeneity: The Igorot Migrant Domestic Workers of Hong KongSupervisor: Prof. LEUNG Yuk Ming Lisa, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Cultural StudiesCo-supervisor: Prof. TANG Tse Shang Denise, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Cultural Studies
CRITICAL WORKS
“The Ecocritical Erotic in Marjorie Evasco’s ‘Elemental.’” Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance, vol. 3, no. 1, Apr. 2023. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.59588/2782-8875.1050.
"Reclaiming the Indigenous Body: Discourse, Social Media, and Aesthetics of Igorot Activism." Kritika Kultura: Forum Kritika in Honor of Edel E. Garcellano Vol. 0, No. 39, 2022, pp. 520-544. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.13185/KK2022.003924.
“Queering Indigeneity: The Igorot Lesbian Domestic Workers of Hong Kong.” Queer Southeast Asia, edited by Shawna Tang and Hendri Yulius, Routledge, 2022, pp. 117-137. doi: 10.4324/9781003320517.
“Land and (Be)longing: The Cordillera Day and the Affective Politics of Igorot Ancestral Land.” Philippine Indigenous Studies Reader, edited by Leah Abayao, Jimmy Balud Fong, and Carolyn Podruchny, Cordillera Studies Center, 2023/24 (forthcoming).
"The Pliant Indigenous Body: Igorot Domestic Migrant Activism in Social Media." Creativity, Self, and Society Online Working Paper Series, No. 4, 2022, pp. 1-21.
"Death’s Capital: Urban Poor Political Ecology and the Aesthetics of Salvaging by the Nightcrawlers of Manila." Environment, Media, and Popular Culture in Southeast Asia, edited by Jason Paolo Telles, John Charles Ryan, and Jeconiah Louis Dreisbach, Springer Asia in Transition; Vol 17, Singapore, 2022, pp. 119-133. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1130-9_7
"Book review: Affect, narratives and politics of Southeast Asian migration by Carlos M. Piocos III." Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Vol. 14, No. 1. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.19
"Research as Homecoming." Introduction. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Linda Tuhiwai-Smith. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.
"Rituals of Home: Dispatches from the Kankana-ey Vegetable Gardens." Interventions. Contemporary Theatre Review. Winter 2020.
"Mapanganib na Katha: Isang Rebyu ng Bato: The General Ronald Dela Rosa Story ni Adolfo Alix Jr." Katipunan Vol 5, No. 1, 2020, pp 1-1.
"Selected Songs of the Salidummay Cultural Group: An Initial Marxist-Ecocritical Assessment." Unsettling Discourses: The Theory and Practice of Indigenous Studies, edited by Darius Letigio Martinez and Ma. Paula Luz Pamintuan-Riva, The Cordillera Studies Center, 2013, pp. 303-315.
CREATIVE WORKS
"Halsema Highway." Indiana Review, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2020.
"Cartography." Katitikan: Literary Journal of the Philippine South, Vol. 1, No. 2, February 2020.
"A Baguio Ghost Story." Ani 40: The Philippine Literary Yearbook - Katutubo, edited by Herminio S. Beltran Jr. The Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2018, pp. 263.
"Alladang." Ani 40: The Philippine Literary Yearbook - Katutubo, edited by Herminio S. Beltran Jr. The Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2018, pp. 262.
"Body Maps" Ani 38: The Philippine Literary Yearbook - The Human Body, edited by Herminio S. Beltran Jr. The Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2014, pp. 87.
"Fragments." Verses Typhoon Yolanda: A Storm of Filipino Poets, edited by Eileen Tabios. Meritage Press, 2014, pp. 105.
AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS
Awardee - Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS) - University Research Grants Council, Hong Kong - SAR
Awardee - Belt and Road Scholarship - Education Bureau, Hong Kong - SAR
Awardee - Hong Kong, China-APEC Scholarship
Best Paper - "The Pliant Indigenous Body: Igorot Domestic Migrant Activism in Social Media." Negotiating Identity and Creativity in Times of Crisis, Faculty of Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, Postgraduate Conference
Fellow - "Halo-Halo Ecologies: A Transnational Workshop on Emergent Philippine Environments and Foodways" Yale-NUS, University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Fellow - "Inter-Asia Intermediality: A Two-part International Workshop," University of Southern California and the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Fellow - Summer Writing Fellowship (SWF) at Purdue University, organized by the Asian American and Asian Resource and Cultural Center (AAARCC) and Anthropology of the Hometown & Abroad (AH&A), with the support of the Purdue Humanities Without Walls grant, Purdue Writing Lab, and Purdue Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS)
Fellow - The Social Life of Care, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities - Cambridge University
Fellow - 20th IYAS National Writers Workshop, University of St. La Salle (USLS) in cooperation with the Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts
Fellow - 3rd Cordillera Studies Writeshop. Cordillera Studies Center, University of the Philippines Baguio, 2020.
Fellow - 2nd Cordillera Studies Writeshop. Cordillera Studies Center, University of the Philippines Baguio, 2017.