About

Cati V. de los Ríos is an Associate Professor of Language, Literacy, and Culture at UC Berkeley’s School of Education. Her research applies critical, sociocultural, and translingual theories to examine the literacy and language practices of immigrant and bi/multilingual youth populations. Her ethnographic, community-based, and participatory research is situated at the axes of literacy studies, educational anthropology, civic and political learning, and ethnic studies, with an emphasis on studying the linguistic-semiotic repertoires that Latina/o/x youth and families deploy and develop across educational settings. Her empirical work examines critical and translingual pedagogies in Ethnic Studies classrooms, the cultural and creative expressivity of bi/multilingual youths through Mexican Regional Music, and Latinx family and youth civic engagement. Her scholarship highlights the diversity of resources—cultural, musical, and civic—that racialized bi/multilingual youth engage to participate socially and intellectually across educational contexts. de los Ríos is a former high school teacher in Spanish, ELD, and Ethnic Studies, and her work has been recognized by numerous prestigious fellowships and awards, including the Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association and the Literacy Research Association. Her scholarship has been published in various academic journals and edited volumes, contributing significantly to the fields of literacy, language education, and ethnic studies.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Pedagogy
• Gender studies
• Anthropology
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Sones Elásticos: Leveraging the Dynamic Spirit of Son Jarocho‐Based Writing Into the <scp>TESOL</scp> Classroom

  TESOL Journal · 2026-03-27

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT TESOL educators have access to diverse didactic resources, including popular music and songwriting, which can be especially effective tools for writing instruction. This conceptual article explores the use of sones—the song verses of son jarocho, a folkloric regional music genre from southeastern Mexico—as a medium for poetic (re)writing, reflection, and social critique in the TESOL classroom. The improvisational tradition of son jarocho allows language‐minoritized students to creatively reinterpret the genre by emphasizing individual experience and dynamic expression. We focus on the Chicane/x band, Las Cafeteras, and their (re)interpretation of the centuries‐old son (son jarocho song), “Señor Presidente/Mr. President” as a catalyst for son jarocho‐based writing practices. We highlight this Mexican musical tradition as a resource for teachers to foster creativity and criticality in TESOL classrooms. Co‐authored with Las Cafeteras lead singer‐songwriter, Denise Carlos, this article theorizes son jarocho as a powerful tool for cultivating creativity and critical literacy while envisioning more equitable futures for immigrants and racialized multilingual communities.

  PublisherDOI

• We Are Sanctuary—Chúng tôi là no’i trú ân—Somos santuario

  The English Journal · 2026-01-01

  articleSenior author

  The English Journal editors invited this article’s authors to reflect on important facts and strategies for teachers and community members to know and enact as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents continue to infringe on the civil and constitutional rights of immigrant and racialized communities.

  PublisherDOI

• Youth Podcasting Sonic Heteroglossia: Exploring Translingual Youths' Multi‐Voiced Poetics of Resistance

  TESOL Quarterly · 2025-08-04 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The multimedia practices and translingual writing of racialized bilingual students are growing areas of research. This article addresses the question: How do racialized bilingual students collaboratively engage in authorial choices to tell translingual stories during a time of heightened anti‐Latinx/e‐sentiment? Using the analytic frames of heteroglossia and translanguaging, this article draws on data from a yearlong ethnographic study of an ethnic studies course that employed sound technologies to engage language‐minoritized students in critical metalinguistic conversations through podcast writing. Findings illuminate the role of podcasting as a tool for fostering critical literacy, cultural belonging, and resistance to oppressive discourses, language ideologies, and anti‐Latinx/e sentiment in students' everyday lives. The article concludes with implications for integrating translanguaging pedagogies into classroom practices that push the boundaries of languages, modes, and media to foster socially transformative writing experiences.

  PublisherDOI

• Glimpses of Possibility: Decentering the E in English Language Arts Juntos

  The English Journal · 2024-09-01 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Authors of the NCTE policy brief on translanguaging discuss possibilities for the field of English language arts by sharing examples from their expansive work on translanguaging in teacher education.

  PublisherDOI

• “Al Sonido del Huehuetl”: Situating Danza Azteca as Family Translingual Prayer and Civic Engagement

  Journal of Language Identity & Education · 2024-03-20 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Despite growing Indigenous Latine/x immigrant populations, Indigenous Latine/x parents' and families' diverse forms of involvement across schools and communities continue to be absent from greater discourses in education. This article explores an Indigenous Quechua and Mexican family's perspectives on multilingualism, culture, learning, and community engagement through danza azteca, a traditional Mesoamerican dance practice. This study asks, according to the focal family, what are some of the motivations for and lessons learned through their participation in danza azteca? Drawing on ethnographic research in California, the findings highlight how danza azteca was a way for the family to participate spiritually and civically in their communities across modes and languages, teach and learn about racial in/justice, and foster greater spaces for humanity. The article ends with a discussion and implications for research.

  PublisherDOI

• Positions, positionality, and relationality in educational research

  International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education · 2023-10-14 · 61 citations

  article1st author

  AbstractIn this paper, we provide a critical genealogy of position statements and take up the questions of why positionality and position statements have become a presence in the field of qualitative education research, what these statements do and don't do, and how relationality may serve purposes of mutuality that reach beyond an individual's social locations. Using content analysis of fifty position statements found in high-impact educational research journals, we theorize and trace how positionality statements have become a genre, with concerns about power and representation from the field of anthropology and in educational research. We also include a conversational interlude as praxis to lift up our own experiences with positionality statements and our interpretations. We provide provocations about positionality statements and what they operationalize in knowledge making projects.Keywords: Positionalitypositionality statementsrelationalityreflexivity Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported.Additional informationNotes on contributorsCati de los RíosCati de los Ríos is an Associate Professor of Adolescent Literacy and Bi/Multilingual Education at UC Berkeley's School of Education. She uses ethnographic and community-based research to document the rich civic, folkloric, and translingual literacies and practices of Latiné/x youth and families.Leigh PatelLeigh Patel is a professor of urban education at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Education. She is also a proud national board member of Education for Liberation. Her research focuses on the ways that education is both an efficient machine of social reproduction and holds the potential to be a tool for liberation.

  PublisherDOI

• Case Studies of Effective Learning Climates for Civic Reasoning and Discussion

  The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · 2023-01-01 · 2 citations

  article

  While the national media continues to highlight the tensions of cultural politics in education, there is a need for young people and educators to be equipped for the daunting local, national, and global challenges that mark their everyday lives. Many educators and young people alike are interested in engaging youth in civic reasoning and discourse that prepares them to meet those many challenges. This article highlights applications of civic reasoning and discourse in three contexts: a traditional high school social studies classroom, a hybrid school-community action project, and an out-of-school Youth Participatory Action Research program. We argue that these case studies show a path forward for developing students’ civic reasoning and discourse skills because the students turn toward and lean into what we define as moments of critical dissonance: in each case, the students and educators work together to engage, rather than avoid, complex sociopolitical realities, even while holding a variety of racial, ethnic, political, and cultural identities.

  PublisherDOI

• Fostering and Sustaining Relationality in Chicanx and Latinx Studies

  Aztlán A Journal of Chicano Studies · 2022-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Research Article| September 01 2022 Fostering and Sustaining Relationality in Chicanx and Latinx Studies: Reflections on Transgenerational Learning Cati V. de los Ríos, Cati V. de los Ríos Cati V. de los Ríos (she/her)is associate professor of literacy and bi/multilingual education at UC Berkeley’s School of Education. She uses community-based, participatory, and ethnographic research to highlight the linguistic gifts, critical literacies, and community engagement of Chicanx and Latinx youth. Her recent research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the National Academy of Education, and the Spencer Foundation, and it can be found in Harvard Educational Review, Applied Linguistics, Reading Research Quarterly, and Journal of Literacy Research. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Gilda L. Ochoa, Gilda L. Ochoa Gilda L. Ochoa (she/her) is a professor of Chicana/o-Latina/o studies at Pomona College. She writes on where she lives and aims to connect her teaching, research, and community involvement. Her work includes Becoming Neighbors in a Mexican American Community (2004), Learning from Latino Teachers (2007), and Academic Profiling: Latinos, Asian Americans, and the Achievement Gap (2013). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Arturo Molina, Arturo Molina Arturo Molina (he/him) is a high school instructor in the Pomona Unifi ed School District, where he teaches social studies, Chicanx/Latinx studies, and classes in the school’s AVID Program. He has taught in Pomona since 2010. His most recent peer-reviewed publications on participatory research on Chicanx/Latinx studies in high school classrooms can be found in the Journal of Literacy Research and Applied Linguistics. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Brenda Gómez Brenda Gómez Brenda Gómez (they/them) graduated from UC Berkeley in Spring 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a minor in education. In Fall 2022, Brenda will start a master’s program in education and pursue their secondary teaching credential at UC Berkeley’s School of Education. They hope to return to their hometown of Pomona, California, as a community-engaged social studies and ethnic studies high school teacher. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Aztlán (2022) 47 (2): 147–160. https://doi.org/10.1525/azt.2022.47.2.147 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Cati V. de los Ríos, Gilda L. Ochoa, Arturo Molina, Brenda Gómez; Fostering and Sustaining Relationality in Chicanx and Latinx Studies: Reflections on Transgenerational Learning. Aztlán 1 September 2022; 47 (2): 147–160. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/azt.2022.47.2.147 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAztlán Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2022 The Regents of the University of California2022 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Delinking to Learn From Youth Expressive Practitioners of the Everyday: A Commentary on “Undoing Competence: Coloniality, Homogeneity, and the Overrepresentation of Whiteness in Applied Linguistics”

  Language Learning · 2022-11-09 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Guitarras on the Rise: Framing Youth Sierreño Bands as Translingual Ingenuity

  Reading Research Quarterly · 2021-07-15 · 12 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT Music remains a fundamental aspect of sociocultural traditions and environments. In this article, I explore a sierreño band of translingual youth artists and their appropriation of norteño music in their designing of new forms of expression. Employing the concept of communities of practice, I examine three youth musicians’ experiences as members of a grupo sierreño (sierreño band) to highlight the nature of learning, sharing, and collaborative cultural action taking place in the membership of this collective. I use translingual literacy and translanguaging as sociocultural frames for understanding how the focal bilingual youth leverage their full semiotic and linguistic repertoires for productive musical and cultural practice and literacy. Drawing from ethnographic methods, the findings highlight the translingual ingenuity and power of the focal youth musicians as active agents in the construction of their musical and linguistic lives and their families’ financial stability through the formation of their own creative translingual economy. Attending to these cultural activities can shed light on how transnational and translingual young people negotiate and make decisions, sophisticatedly employ literacies to communicate and solve problems, and come to make sense of their social worlds. Thoughtfully considering the musicality of young people can help educators better understand them as agentic constructors of their own creative capacities, skills, knowledge, and cultural lifeworlds.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kate Seltzer

  7 shared

• Arturo Molina

  University of Castilla-La Mancha

  3 shared

• Jorge Expósito López

  Universidad de Granada

  2 shared

• Ernest Morrell

  2 shared

• Noreen Naseem Rodríguez

  2 shared

• Gilda L. Ochoa

  2 shared

• Adam D. Musser

  Boise State University

  1 shared

• Yared Portillo

  University of California, Berkeley

  1 shared

Labs

• Cati V. de los Ríos LabPI

Awards & honors

• 2026 Early Career Award from American Educational Research A…
• Early Career Awards from AERA's Division G "Social Context o…
• Early Career Awards from AERA's Grassroots Community and You…
• Early Career Achievement Award from Literacy Research Associ…
• Arthur Applebee Award for Excellence in Research on Literacy…