Members

Aristotle J. Atienza teaches language, literature, and popular culture in the Filipino Department at the Ateneo de Manila University.  He has also taught special courses on eroticism and pornography, and performing femininity in cinema (with J. Pilapil Jacobo and Alvin B. Yapan). He is currently taking his Ph.D. in Philippine Studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He is co-editor (with Rolando B. Tolentino) of Ang Dagling Tagalog, 1903-1936 (2007).

 

John Bengan teaches writing and literature at the University of the Philippines Mindanao. He received a Ford Foundation International Fellowship to pursue an MFA in creative writing at The New School. His stories and essays have appeared in Kritika Kultura, Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature, Asiatic, BooksActually’s Gold Standard, and the “Writing the Philippines” issue of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. He lives in Davao City.

 

Christian Jil R. Benitez is a faculty member of the Kagawaran ng Filipino, Ateneo de Manila University, where he graduated with an AB-MA in Filipino Literature. Hailed as the Poet of the Year 2018, his current critical engagements primarily move around Philippine time, as perceived through the tropical, mythological, and material. 

 

Ian Harvey A. Claros is a public school teacher in Manila. He finished his AB/BSE Literature at the Philippine Normal University. He also teaches at the Kagawaran ng Filipino in Ateneo de Manila University where he pursues his MA in Literary and Cultural studies. His research work deals with vernacular (Visayan) interventions in memory and trauma that both resist and engage with their western construction.

 

Emerald F. Manlapaz (on leave) is an Instructor at the Department of Art Studies, College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines Diliman. She has done research on social memory in Mendiola, on Cinemalaya and Philippine independent cinema, and for a history of Metro Manila’s transit system. Her research interests include memory in cinema, documentary filmmaking, and Philippine film. She is currently studying for an MA degree in art studies at the College of Arts and Letters, UP Diliman.

 

Patrick D. Flores (on leave) is Professor of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines, which he chaired from 1997-2003, and Curator of the Vargas Museum in Manila. He is Adjunct Curator at the National Art Gallery, Singapore. He was selected by the Philippine government to curate the Philippine Pavilion of the 56th Venice Art Biennale in 2015. He was also one of the curators of Under Construction: New Dimensions in Asian Art in 2000 and the Gwangju Biennale (Position Papers) in 2008. He was a Visiting Fellow at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1999 and an Asian Public Intellectuals Fellow in 2004.  Among his publications are Painting History: Revisions in Philippine Colonial Art (1999), Remarkable Collection: Art, History, and the National Museum (2006) and Past Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia (2008). He was a grantee of the Asian Cultural Council (2010) and a member of the Advisory Board of the exhibition The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989 (2011) organized by the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe and member of the Guggenheim Museum’s Asian Art Council (2011). He co-edited the Southeast Asian issue with Joan Kee for Third Text (2011).

 

Tessa Maria Guazon (on leave) is assistant professor at the Art Studies Department, University of the Philippines Diliman. Her research interests center on cities and culture, specifically art production in the context of urban development. She was recently awarded the Asian Public Intellectuals Fellowship for fieldwork in Thailand and Indonesia in 2014.

 

Lisa Ito-Tapang (on leave) teaches art history and theory at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts (UP CFA). Her writings have appeared in Pananaw Philippine Journal of Visual Arts, Forum on Contemporary Art and Society, Asian Art News and Ctrl+P Journal of Contemporary Art, among others. She co-authored Without Walls: A Tour of Philippine Paintings at the Turn of the Millennium (2010). She holds a degree in Fine Arts (Art History) from the UP CFA and is currently completing a master’s degree in art studies at the UP College of Arts and Letters.

 

Skilty C. Labastilla teaches social sciences, research, and popular culture in Ateneo de Manila University. He is also a Research Associate at Ateneo’s Institute of Philippine Culture, where he is engaged in research on urban informal settlements, governance, and children and youth. He holds degrees in Anthropology and Social Development and has taught at U.P. Diliman, U.P. Mindanao, and La Trobe University. He manages Pinoy Rebyu, a website dedicated to Philippine cinema.

 

Janus Nolasco is University Researcher at the Asian Center, UP Diliman. He has a BA in Comparative Literature and an MA in Asian Studies, for which he specialized on West Asia. His research interests include area studies, philosophy, political philosophy, Islamic studies, literature, and needless to say, Philippine popular cinema. A defender of romantic comedies, he is the author of “Between Philippine Studies and Filipino-American Studies: The Transpacific as Area and the Transformation of Area Studies in the 21st Century,” published in Suvannabhumi: Multi-Disciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (2018). His analysis of ‘English, Only Please’ and essay on Pinoy Action Movies appeared in the Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia. He has also contributed to New Mandala.

Tito R. Quiling, Jr. earned a master’s degree in Media Studies (Film) from the University of the Philippines Diliman. He has received fellowships for national workshops in creative writing, scriptwriting, and arts criticism. His works have been published in Unitas, Tómas, Humanities Diliman, Plaridel Journal of Communication, Media, and Society, NANG Magazine, among others. He is currently an instructor under the Department of Communication and Media Studies, Faculty of Arts and Letters at the University of Santo Tomas. His research and writing interests center on the intersections of cinema, literature, heritage, architecture, and the city.

 

Judith Camille Rosette is currently taking MA Art Studies, major in Art Theory and Criticism at the University of the Philippines Diliman. She had previously lectured on art theory and art history at the De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde Manila. Her research interests include design history and design studies.

 

Jaime Oscar M. Salazar (on leave) is a graduate student of the Department of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He has received fellowships to national workshops on criticism, and his writing has appeared in academic and popular venues. He is part of the research team of the recently launched TutoK Freedom of Expression (FoE), a social network and online platform for collaborative art production and educational discussions on art. TutoK FoE is a project of TutoK, an artists’ initiative. He currently works for an international humanitarian organization.

 

Louise Jashil R. Sonido teaches at the University of the Philippines Department of English and Comparative Literature. As a teacher, scholar, multimedia artist, and cultural worker, she has a range of research interests transecting literary criticism, intellectual historiography, media and film scholarship, performance curation, and ethnographies of multimedia production. She is a member of the Congress of Teachers and Educators for Nationalism and Democracy (CONTEND-UP), the Concerned Artists of the Philippines, and the Performance Curators Initiatives.

 

Cristian Tablazon works with video and other photo-based media, installation, and text. He is a recipient of several national fellowships in creative writing and cultural criticism, and his works have been published and exhibited in 14 countries. His writings have appeared in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Kritika Kultura, Asian Journal of Culture, Literature and Society, Social Science Diliman, High Chair, hal., and Kilómetro 111: Ensayos sobre cine, among others. He runs Nomina Nuda, a small nonprofit independent platform and exhibition space in Los Baños, Laguna, and works as a resident instructor and program coordinator at the Philippine High School for the Arts. His research interests include memory and autobiography in moving-image practices, low-resolution imagery, place and space in cinema, transportation and mobility in East and Southeast Asian horror films, and spaces of spectrality and representations of trauma in visual media.

 

Andrea Anne I. Trinidad (Chair, 2022-2023) obtained her AB-MA Filipino Literature degree from Ateneo de Manila University. Though currently working as a full-time Instructor of Filipino Language and Literature in the same university, she also considers herself as a full-time fan girl that majorly influences her academic interest in Pop Culture particularly the field of Fan Studies. As an academic-fan, she was able to present her papers recently at a conference in Sydney as part of the International Association of the Study of Popular Romance and in La Trobe University, Melbourne.

 

FORMER MEMBERS

Romulo Baquiran Jr.
Melissa Contreras
Flaudette May Datuin
Joel David
Mike Feria
Noel Ferrer
Eulalio Guieb III
Eloisa May Hernandez
Jaya Jacobo
Noy Lauzon
Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez
Gerard Lico
JPaul S. Manzanilla
Charlson Ong
Jema Pamintuan
Choy Pangilinan
James Rañeses
Jerry Respeto
Clare Salaveria
Neil Martial Santillan
Ariel Valerio
Ailyn Villamarin
Galileo Zafra