Laura Pulido, my scholar-activist role model, writes that, “how you combine scholarship and activism is linked to how you construct your life.” [1] This position rings powerfully true for me for a number of reasons. First, I have come to consider myself a public scholar after years of working with and for non-profit programs, and engaging in struggles for social, educational and food justice. Secondly, my academic life has never been particularly academic: while I can excel in school, I have never made ‘school’ the primary site and space in my life. I require my energies to be engaged outside of the walls of the university in order to feel fulfilled, and, in fact, to be the best scholar I can be. Finally, I am beginning to understand that the university / public binary is as porous and flexible in my own life as it is in intellectual debates about how to situate the university and academy.
As a relatively new graduate student, my diverse interests often draw guffaws from my colleagues. How could I possibly be involved in as many things as I am, and still “get my work done?”. Well. As mentioned above, I am learning to navigate the dialectical spaces between ‘university’ and ‘publics’. My university life perforates, interweaves, and contradicts my ‘other’ life in fascinating and generative ways. Through music, I am able to write and engage a part of my brain that pushes my creative potential, and allows me to quiet the analytical part of my brain. Collaborating with musicians also influences and feeds into the way I approach scholarship: put the group first, and it [the work] will always sound and feel better. As Kobayashi argued at a pivotal turn in feminist geography, speaking to the power and politics of collaboration, we need to consider “who speaks with whom, and how?”[2] As a cook, I think about where food comes from, how it nurtures my own body, and how it can be used to bring people together. This emerges in my scholarship as I strive to bring people together to collaborate, share ideas in new ways, and produce new, diverse publics through conversation and engagement. Finally, I am constantly trying to build community in and out of the university. While I admire my colleagues for their insight and analysis, it is equally important to me to engage with folks outside of the university. Is this not the best barometer for what diverse publics think about? Working with and through community allows me to see how my scholarly ideas resonate with those not affiliated with the university. It also raises questions about future collaboration, new venues for displaying my work, and new perspectives to pursue in my own work.
Now, Pulido might be referring to leading a rich, if sometimes frenetic life (like I appear to be living!). But, I would argue her words are meant to reflect the ways that we place ourselves in the spaces of activism and social struggle. She states that the ways we engage with community organizations and social justice work will directly influence the type of scholarship we engage in. From her perspective, fully immersing oneself will lead to a more accountable, and more reciprocal relationship with organizations and movements. Additionally, Pulido challenges the assumption that one’s contribution to organizations be in a purely academic form. Sometimes, we need to just ‘be a reliable supporter/member who could provide whatever assistance was needed.”[3]
Aside from my diverse interests mentioned above, the way I construct my life around activism will be and has been at the core of my work as a public scholar. Through involvement with a wide array of organizations, I have come to question the ways in which non-profits speak to and serve diverse publics of their own, and the ways that their more ‘public’ voices often contradict and push back against actual lived experiences of the individuals that make use of and are targeted for programming.
A number of my portfolio documents already speak to this commitment to non-profits and social justice work. I also propose new collaborative projects that will challenge my own assumptions about publics (as ones I work with), and publics/audiences. In “Open Arms”, I write about the ways that this organization appeals to its volunteers and fosters a space for active citizenship. This artifact documents my first “scholarly” engagement with a non-profit; through participant observation and qualitative interviews, I was able to uncover volunteers’ feelings about the organization and their motivations for volunteering. Following this piece, my letter of intent for the Public Scholarship Certificate explains how I have begun to question and challenge the dichotomy between my identity as a graduate student and as a community member in organizations. I see the public scholarship program as a way to more clearly articulate this ‘split’ identity, and how to best make use of my skills, motivations, energies and ‘social capital’, as Pulido writes. My letter of intent frames how I saw myself starting out as a budding public scholar, and also draws heavily on my previous contributions. Finally, “Community Gardening – Research Proposal” is an artifact of my first attempt at articulating my research interests in a formal proposal. This is an interesting artifact for two reasons: 1) I was writing to a new public: that of the review committee. I had to craft my proposal in a way that conveyed my motivation and commitment to public scholarship but in language that ‘made it count’; 2) in thinking through a budget, work timeline and interview scripts, I had to think specifically about the methodologies I would have to employ, as a scholar engaged with non-profits and their participants. Up to this point, collaboration had felt more theoretical. In writing this proposal, the realities began to hit home.
Now, there are additional artifacts that I can draw from that speak back to Pulido’s insistence that sometimes service work, and providing ‘whatever assistance is needed’ is the best use of our resources and energies. “Urban Farm Map” and “Spatial-Jobs Mismatch” are both demonstrations of artifacts that emerged by using more quantitative skills, like GIS and spatial analysis. From a pedagogical perspective, the teaching I did with Admission Possible (lesson plan), the Community Design Center of MN, and Mapping Youth Journeys all document more of a praxis oriented scholarly engagement. In teaching about food systems, college access, and spatial injustice, I was able to inspire critical thinking and raise questions about access and equality.
Pulido’s words lead to only one question for me: where do I go next? I’ve been very intrigued by new digital media and digital scholarship. Sharon Daniels work “Public Secrets” is a brilliant project that allows the viewer to create their own non-linear narrative, (as opposed to those of documentaries, articles, presentations, etc.) This idea of allowing a public to emerge through the work is incredibly powerful, and has far greater implications for transformative social change. I would love to learn more about multiple ways of producing and sharing knowledge with and for diverse publics.
Finally, to me, living where I work is of utmost importance. While many geographers look ‘outwards’, I feel more comfortable and accountable by doing work with the communities I live in and engage with. For me, this means working towards educational justice, food justice, and a more public and critical attention to youth voices. Through my work with Seattle Youth Garden Works, I will develop a pilot program of collaboration and recommendations. Through interviews with youth, collaboration with leadership, and digital media, I hope to provide recommendations that capture the voices of youth in the program. By taking their knowledge seriously, I use my skills and resources as a graduate student to improve the programming to more accurately reflect the needs of youth. Ideally, I would love to create an interactive website and database that would allow non-profits to share their insights and inputs from youth.
At this specific time and place, I am still creating space for myself in a relatively new city, building relationships across disciplines, diverse publics and communities. I have much political work and also ‘soul-searching’, (as many feminist geographers write) ahead of me, before I will feel comfortable with how I’ve constructed my life as a graduate student, musician, activist and community member.
[1] Pulido, L. 2008. Frequently (Un)Asked Questions about Being a Scholar Activist in Engaging Contradictions: Theories, Politics and Methods of Activist Scholarship. Ed: Charles R. Hale. University of California Press. p. 346
[2] Kobayashi, A. 1994. Coloring the Field: Gender, “Race”, and the Politics of Fieldwork. The Professional Geographer 46(1) 73-80.
[3] Pulido, 356
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