Framing for Public Scholarship

Today is just a gross day, in my opinion. I even turned the heat on at one point... but that is what I get for working from home for the day. Its creature comforts come at a price.

So, I am posting a draft of a piece I need to write for the Public Scholarship program at UW. We are supposed to articulate who we are as public scholars, and where we are going. Some of the references to my own archive won't make sense, but I would LOVE FEEDBACK. Please leave comments on direction -- I have a really hard time articulating myself with these things sometimes. Specifically, I'd like to know if my motivations come through, and if you get a clear sense of what is important to me as a scholar? I think that part is lacking. It is posted below. Thanks in advance!

Framing Essay Draft:

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.

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[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

Food Day?

Apparently today was Food Day, a national endeavor to push for more healthy, 'real food', including the Real Food Challenge, seen across.

This is an interesting event for me for a number of reasons. Namely, four years ago, I probably would have been a lead organizer at Macalester for this event. Today, I was practically apathetic. Were it not for the delicious looking and tasting free treats that they were handing out on Red Square, I probably would have walked right by. Additionally, in the last few years, the meanings of 'real food' have changed for me. Or, at the very least, they are more complicated than I thought they were a few years ago.

Real food, as I now know, is incredibly culturally, geographically, and economically specific. To one person, a hot bowl of pho from a shop on the Ave is as real as it gets, while others might want Kraft mac and cheese; a hot dog, empanadas, sambusas, collards, etc etc. Our associations with real food are not only a huge product of our upbringing (duh), but also with where we are situated at that time and place. Will I likely ever consider vegan cheese real food? Probably not. Even if it meant that animals were spared in the creation of that product, it is still, to me, a product. And, as I've gotten more confident in the kitchen (and in life??), I try to avoid things that could only be labeled 'products'. I prefer working with produce. If my refrigerator isn't filled with vegetables, I usually think it looks quite drab and empty. In fact, other than milk and cheese (real cheese!), the occasional hummus, and a variety of leftovers (oh, and some cultured buttermilk that my roommate got for 'baking'. He's used it once), my fridge pretty much ONLY has produce!

So, given these personal convictions about cooking, not to mention my intense love of feeding people around me and building community through food, why am I not more vocal and supportive of Food Day? Why did it come and go with hardly a moment's notice?

The 'mission' of food day, from their website, is this: Food Day seeks to bring together Americans from all walks of life—parents, teachers, and students; health professionals, community organizers, and local officials; chefs, school lunch providers, and eaters of all stripes—to push for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way. We will work with people around the country to create thousands of events in homes, schools, churches, farmers markets, city halls, and state capitals.

Perhaps it is the blatant lack of attention to any power dynamics; perhaps it is the fact that this movement still screams whiteness and privilege to me; perhaps it is just that I have 500 other things on my mind right now, and I've come to peace with approaching 'real food' less from an activist perspective, and more from the comfort of my own kitchen.

Either way, I appreciate people that are pushing Food Day, for what its worth. We DO desperately need to change our nation's food system. It is systematically ruining local ecosystems, polluting people's bodies, and forfeiting other nations' (not to mention our own small farmers') chances of competing in a 'free' market. I could mention at least a dozen other problems, but if you've paid any attention to popular press and Michael Pollan over the last ten years, you know the deal.

Perhaps this awareness is one signifier that I need to walk the walk. Yes, I support local foods, but I also live on a grad student budget and cannot afford the farmers market every week. Yes I support sustainable agriculture, but I currently like economic justice is slightly more important. And, yes, I support slow food and local activism, but I am trying to produce a thesis and have my hands dirty with other work right now. But, that is a lot of 'but's. I am sure that there are ways that I can engage more productively with the struggle for a healthy, sustainable and JUST food system. I certainly believe in it. I just need to find a path that allows me to be true to where I'm at politically, intellectually and productively. It certainly leaves me with something to chew on... (dad, that pun's for you).

transnational feminist praxis

I finally understand a bit more about the type of work my colleague Amy is undertaking!

I am soon off to bed, but wanted to include a quote that is food for thought in thinking through my own work, and what type of politics I want to adopt in my work. The following is from Richa Nagar and Amanda Swarr's collaborative transnational feminist praxis.

[we were trying to] conceptualize feminist collaboration as an intellectual and political practice that allows us to grapple with the possibilities and limitations of theory as praxis and insists upon problematizing the rigid compartmentalization that separates research from pedagogy, academic from activist labor, and theorizing from performative arts.

During the first public scholarship colloquium, Gillian Harkins explained that 'the university doesn't like us to give away our labor for free", as we are often seen to do in the form of 'activist labor' mentioned above. But, as an individual person, how can I draw a line between my activist work, when it is 'for the university' or 'for the community'? The work should, ideally, speak for itself. Perhaps this is another way to see ourselves as a scholar-artifact.

Anyway, it's a good quote to chew on, and were it earlier in the day, I would likely have more to say about it. I can say this: it is infinitely easier to read about this stuff than to actually do it. But the doing is what its all about...

On a day well spent

While any day with a good idea is a good day, sometimes good days are also just days with very few low moments.

Today was such a day. I started with a brisk bike ride, sat in a highly entertaining Matt Sparke lecture, met with a delightful student, and then checked in with my fellow co-president about department news.

I got some reading done, had a snack, enjoyed lunch, caught up on a highly amusing Daily Show, in which Jon Stewart railed on mainstream media for their approach to #OWS. Had a productive meeting, did some reading, and caught up with a friend on the phone. Wasted only a small amount of time ogling over the new iPhone, and ended the day at the gym with a much needed, though short, workout.

Finally, the super amazing Geo-Servers (intramural geography volley ball team) played a great game with great spirit and incredible improvement from our last game! I ended up the night with a bike ride home, (though this one less refreshing, and more just sticky and gross after leaving the gym), to eat dinner, enjoy a hilarious episode of Modern Family, and make some cardamom snickerdoodles for a colleague and neighbor.

No good ideas today, but still a great day.

A quick note / some sharing of anxieties

I received feedback from my adviser today on my NSF proposal, and I am feeling a bit deflated.

Turns out I have about 50 different threads, and I don't know how they fit together, and as I write about them I'm also worried about the fact that I fit less and less with Sarah's interests...

I struggle so much with quick proposal academic writing. In my head, the connections to things make so much sense. When I verbalize them, people seem to understand. And then when I write them down, poof! The connections are lost.

We are sitting down on Monday to look at it, and I'll commit some time to it on Sunday. Until then, I just need to put it out of my mind and focus on the rest of the work for my thesis: read like crazy, complete interviews, and do archival work!

On defining publics

I left last week's public scholarship meeting feeling dismayed. I had been told that in describing and reading aloud my reflections on 'my publics', that I seemed to be envisioning my publics in two ways: an organizational public and a representational public.

Which left me thinking, "What the fuck?"

This was voiced by a professor trained in Cultural Studies and the Humanities, which use very different language than us social scientists. I asked for clarification, which unfortunately didn't help much. I wondered, "how am I supposed to articulate my thoughts for this class when I don't even understand the language being used?" So, I sought out some fellow geographers who went through the public scholarship program last year. We met for lunch today, and discussed many of the confusing points and areas of tension.

Amongst other things, this wonderful discussion time got me feeling slightly more confident about how to articulate my thoughts and direction for public scholarship. One peer reminded me that the language and angst arising out of cultural studies about public scholarship doesn't appear as much with geographers, because, well, we've been working with 'publics' for as long as there has been fieldwork! Cultural studies on the other hand has traditionally been much more theoretical and less focused on working with communities and public groups.

What this means for me as a public scholar is that I need to use language I feel comfortable with, rather than trying to apply my research interests and values through cultural studies language (no offense, cultural studies. you've done good work. i just don't get the vernacular).

I now recognize that defining myself as a public scholar is as much about how I articulate the value I see in my work as it is about fitting into specific language of 'publics/audiences'.

Another point of discussion related back to good ole' Laura Pulido, and her discussion of reciprocity. One of my colleagues was explaining their history of doing service work with local organizations, and that they pulled artifacts from this work to put in their portfolio. While not traditionally considered 'scholarship', this colleague and I both take Pulido's lead: sometimes, it doesn't matter what we as scholars want to do. If an organization needs help phone banking or filing, then do that! We don't always have to exert our 'expert knowledge' (if we even have it!). These engagements with community organizations and publics are a first step in a series of iterations of scholarship and identity as a public scholar. How can we begin to engage with an organization if we do not have rapport, common interests, and shared goals? This must begin somewhere, and it is often through these less professional, less structured encounters that we begin to see the greatest contradictions, tensions, interesting questions, etc.

So, while all of us lamented the fact that many of our colleagues in the CPS program had *worlds* more experience when it came to Public Scholarship (think: teaching college classes behind bars, curating museum shows, organizing oral history projects, writing for and collaborating with local social justice movements, starting collectives on campus...), we also have things to contribute. There is a) no one way to define public scholarship (so maybe we should stop trying); and b) everyone can articulate their own identity as a public scholar however they see fit.

This left me feeling far more comfortable with the new assignment, which is to draft a framing essay for our portfolio. Translation: I need to explain and frame the work that I have done, and plan to do, which will demonstrate my work as a public scholar. At the end of my studies, this portfolio should capture the way that I've engaged with the 'public', both in collaborative forms, and as audiences. So, at this point, I need to think about how I articulate the value of my work, the direction I plan to head, and what experiences and work has positioned me where I am now.

To my colleagues, thank you for your words of encouragement. Yes, it felt a bit motherly at times, but that is excellent. This is an incredibly iterative process, and it doesn't help that I'm trying to do this as I also apply for NSF funding, do my fieldwork, and think about how I will write my thesis. ::takes deep breath:: It will all happen with time!

Field Notes = Blegh

After a long, long day (up at 7, at school by 8:30, not home until 8:30 pm), the last thing I feel like doing is writing field notes. I would rather catch up on my pop culture guilty pleasures, like how i met your mother.

Alas, jotting down the observations from my day, recording the presence of themes and anomalies, remembering intriguing quotes; these are the throes of field research and participant observation.

I get so wrapped up in the actual work we're doing that I forget to take a step back and look for emerging themes or contradictions! And then, trying to recall things when my brain is saying, "are we done yet", becomes synonymous with trying to run through mud.

One of these days it is bound to get better, I suppose. After years of this stuff. I would turn to one of my academic heroes, Laura Pulido, for guidance in taking field notes when working directly with an organization. She's had many wise words in writing about being a scholar activist. If only I could just knock on her door...

In other news, is it really almost Halloween? As I described to a friend of mine today, "I'm feeling so uninspired that if I were a painting right now, I'd be a blank canvas hung in the modern art wing, to which passersby would sneer, 'how is that art? my 2 year old could do that!'" ::shrug:: maybe I'll just carve a pumpkin and give candy to the neighborhood chill'un.

So... Inequality. How is that geography?

In a car ride today, coming back from a weekend hiatus to Portland, a fellow Craigslist rider asked me about what I study at the University.

I told her my spiel, "I'm interested in urban inequality, young people, and the way that non-profits mitigate or impact young people's experiences of inequality". She lolled her head against the back of my seat, as she sprawled out against the backseat of the car. Her face was precariously close to my own as she declared, "So, how is that geography? Like, urban studies?"

"Well, yes, I suppose you could say that". Silence followed. When prodded again about what I wanted to do with this degree, I told her that while conflicted with the politics and ethics of academia, that I would be thrilled to be a professor and teach at a college.

"But, isn't that a bit of a contradiction? I mean, how are you going to fix inequality when you're working for a school. Just playing devil's advocate, but... I mean, there's no direct link to fixing what you're talking about and teaching middle class kids."

At this point, I explained my views on teaching. And I am sticking by them.

I think that teaching can be as transformative, and perhaps a more direct path to social change, than many of the non-profits I've been involved with. Social programs deal with small scale, often immeasurable 'progress' for local communities (most of the time). Funding is haphazard, inter-office politics are flagrant, and ethics and cultural sensitivity are often lacking. I hold much respect for committed non-profit professionals. There is very little appreciation, and very little pay, for the arduous and demanding work of changing the world.

Now, if we think about why people are in the situations they're in, why they even need to rely on non-profit and social service programs to meet their basic needs and improve community health, then we need more than non-profits. That is when we need critical pedagogy in order to shape the minds of young people to be critical thinkers and look for larger, context specific explanations of inequality.

Teaching students to unpack and examine social phenomenon at different scales, from different perspectives, in specific geographical-historical lenses: this is what geography is all about, in my book.

My mother always tells me that a good day is a day when you have a good day. In that vein, I think a good course is a course where you get through to at least one student. Last fall, I had such a student, who attended a talk by Ananya Roy, and is now volunteering with a microfinance organization so he can learn more for himself. In the spring, I worked with a GIS student who is pursuing field work and biology, but now with the knowledge of GIS and the politics of map making.

So, if these students go out into the world and contribute their own way of thinking and looking and seeing, then how many ripples will they send out, too? Yes, education is not accessible to many people. The university is becoming less open and less public every day. I recognize the politics in this. But, I think that if I work my best when I'm with students, then that is where I need to be in order to best express my own wishes for social justice and transformative urban experiences. Which means, Craigslist girl, that yes. I think I can improve inequality through teaching. Perhaps it is not as direct as a workfare program or job-training program, but I don't think it needs to be.