This blog, a reflection on my dissertation project one year into the process, was originally produced as a talk for the 2016 Futures of American Studies Institute. It includes an overview of my dissertation (a snapshot of how I’m concurrently conceptualizing it, though it continues to evolve), some more specific work from the chapter on Audre…
In a recent blog post, Cathy N. Davidson wrote: “There are personal, cultural, learning, and social reasons people don’t speak up in class. Students of color and women of all races, introverts, the non-conventional thinkers, those from poor previous educational backgrounds, returning or “nontraditional students,” and those from cultures where speaking out is considered rude…
Where we have cultures of oppression & survival / we need a different way of measuring,” a student noted in a class taught by feminist, antiracist, lesbian, activist, warrior poet and educator Audre Lorde, in 1984. Systems of measurement and assessment are key indicators of what we value. If we want to change the system…
“Because nothing is sufficient, we must use everything,” Rebecca Fullan recently remarked, which is how I’ve come to understand the relationship between academia and activism. Since beginning my Ph.D. program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center, I’ve struggled with the relationship between academic institutions and the grassroots, community-based, activist work that takes place on…
Recently, I was invited by the Futures Initiative and HASTAC to offer opening remarks for a year-long conversation, The University Worth Fighting For, a year-long project designed to tie student-centered, engaged practices in our classrooms to larger issues of institutional change, equality, race, gender, and all forms of social justice. Here is an excerpt from my…
This past week, members of the “De/Post/Colonial Digital Humanities” seminar at the Humanities Intensive Learning and Teaching (HILT) summer institute, under the skillful guidance of Roopika Risam and micha cárdenas, came up with “Creative and Critical Precepts for Digital Humanities Projects,” a list of methodological, epistemological, and ethical questions to consider when designing a digital humanities…
