Daisy Donaji Matias is a Oaxacan-American writer and interdisciplinary scholar from Richmond, Virginia. Daisy’s dissertation project, Minor Meditations: Techniques for Other Ways of Being, interweaves literature from minoritarian performance theory, psychological anthropology, and Indigenous studies to examine Latin American artists and healers who deploy Indigenous knowledges and techniques of attention to transform subjectivity and corporeality. The techniques of attention she considers range from psychedelic ritual to filmic absorption to sound healing, all of which function as improvisational strategies for undoing neocolonial violence inflicted upon the Indigenous and Indigenous descended transnational body. Her case studies include the Mazatec Sabía, María Sabina; the Mixtec film Collective, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos; and transdisciplinary artist and healer, Guadalupe Maravilla. Daisy holds dual Bachelor’s degrees in Art History and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Master’s degree in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. Daisy is a 2024–2025 Graduate Fellow at the Northwestern Center for Native American and Indigenous Research. Since beginning her graduate studies, Daisy has formally mentored upwards of fifteen fellow scholars of color through her continued work with the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers and other diversity focused programs. Daisy lives on the far north side of Chicago with her bunny and her partner.
