Kaína Mendoza-Price is social worker, researcher, and arts worker in her fourth year of studies in Religion & Latin American Studies. As a social worker, she oversaw the coordination of programs to support over 200 2SLGBTQ+ newcomers settle in Toronto during the pandemic. As a researcher, Kaína disseminated the experiences and knowledge-bases of Trans Spanish-speaking migrants as well as documented experiences of Spanish-speaking domestic workers in Toronto. Her fellowship research project is titled Cosmovisions of a Travesti: Religious Expression Amongst Trans Women in Brazil’s Underworld. Kaína is one of our 2024-25 Undergraduate Fellows.
What are your main research interests and what excites you most about them?
Throughout these past years at the University, I have been working alongside a group of Trans folks in Cuba and Brazil who are involved in Afro-Diasporic Religious Communities to disseminate their theological outlooks and how their precarious social positionality shapes their vernacular beliefs. The research I've done has been pretty multidisciplinary; part theology, part ethnography, part folklore studies, part human geography, part new media. In all cases, these types of spaces haven't really been well studied, so it allows me to be experimental with how I produce and present my research, and ensure the community is actively involved.
What project are you working on at the JHI and why did you choose it?
I chose to use my time at Jackman (and the resources they had at their disposal) to spend extensive time producing a short film in Brazil as well as write a reflective and relational ethnographic paper about my experience as a Trans practitioner of an Afro-Diasporic Religion, living with another group of Trans People who practice an Afro-Diasporic Religion, but in a completely different socio-political context and language. I had already spent some time in Cuba doing this kind of research, but Cuba was a much more familiar environment for me given I have a lot of religious family and in-laws from there. I thought this would be a better time than ever to be able to push myself as a writer and researcher in a less familiar environment, and indeed it was a fascinating experience.
How has your JHI Fellowship experience been so far?
What a great fellowship to have been able to participate in! The amount of fellows present allows for some really dynamic learning to take place, and I feel I have benefited greatly from being in the room. In particular, I feel the events that emerge from people connecting with each other and subsequently organizing together are particularly valuable places where we really go deeper in learning from one another.
Why do you believe the humanities are important?
I think the current political environment is partially fueled by the lack of critical thinking which was certainly cultivated by the shift in the idea of university as a space for open-minded and dynamic learning to a technical degree factory. In my department, we have a lot of "bird courses" that attract hard science students, and I am glad I am graduating when I am, because the rise of AI tools and the disrespect students show to professors of these really specialized forms of knowledge really brings down the learning experience I fell in love with in 2019 when I first enrolled. Not surprisingly, we are also seeing more violent politics and fake news proliferate far too easily and it has real consequences even for my own and my family's safety on the ground. I think humanities are important as a tool to cultivate critical thinking, but I also think we would benefit greatly from a "humanities renaissance" where people can connect with humanities in a more emotionally invested way. That's why I am trying to also do my part in creating content and digital media that follows me along my ethnographic journeys. In Latin American countries, the tradition of folkloric studies has a long history of doing that, and I think North American academics can benefit from thinking beyond writing.
Can you share something you read/watched/listened to recently that you enjoyed/were inspired by?
A group of Trans Venezuelan migrants in Argentina were able to uncover two documentaries filmed in the 80s (and subsequently fallen out of circulation and thus memory) which documented the lives of Trans People living in Caracas, the city where my family is from. It provides great enriching context for my own research.
What is a fun fact about you?
During my fellowship (which also coincided with my last year of studies and a bunch of grad applications), I took a specialized course in Tea Tasting, and we got to try and evaluate really high-end teas from China, Japan, and South Asia. I didn't really have a motivation in mind for doing the course other than I knew it would be a very unique environment and I'd get to meet new people, but it's (fortunately or unfortunately) made me a little bit of a tea snob, and now the bagged teas at JHI just don't cut it for me! Hopefully before I leave I can suggest some tea importers to buy from for the next cohort of fellows. I've now become convinced too many people are missing out on the amazing variety of tea being grown in East Asia.