Elyse Gordon – University of Washington Geography

This quarter, I enrolled in an exploratory course called “Hybrid Humanities: Critical, Digital, Geographical”. While I did not know precisely what to expect when I enrolled 11 weeks ago, I am now quite pleased with the course and the new skills and questions learned/posed.

Our aim was to play with digital humanities, explore code, and create new interventions from a critical cartographic and geographical perspective. Many of the questions about how knowledge is made, how arguments are visualized, and how we support our claims through new platforms and technologies have been the domain of digital humanities. However, critical geographers interested in representation, GIS, and the geoweb have also questioned how we can better represent relation space. To this point, this has mostly been done through qualitative GIS, critical GIS, and theorists who have not yet linked theory and digital practice.

This is where our class attempts to intervene. A persistent question on the table is: “how can we make the technology and form of our arguments best suit the arguments we want to make?” In other words, rather than constraining our arguments/claims to existing platforms and sources, can we make this process more iterative, playful and creative by learning and adapting the technology TO our own work? Can we harness the skills, at whatever capacity we are able, to be both digital producers, consumers, theorists and analysts?

We have approached the quarter through two paths: one, theoretical, reading about new ontologies of space and knowledge, better understanding the lineage and aims of the digital humanities, exploring the ways network society impacts our studies and technologies. On the other hand, we’ve been encouraged to play through praxis activities: learning some basic Python, experimenting with javascript and D3, and encouraged to apply these skills to our own projects and interventions.

A consistent question seemed to emerge. One of my colleagues, Lila Garcia, and I noticed that many of the technologies and projects were doing really amazing things with multimedia, creating interactive platforms that served as archives as well as stories, pathways as well as explorations. However, we saw a significant arena for geographic work: how are current digital humanities projects conceptualizing and operationalizing ‘space’ and ‘place’? How could we adapt and intervene with future work to specifically address this question? Can we make our own critical interventions in representations and theorizations of relational space through platforms like SCALAR, D3 or even something like Prezi?

Lila and I decided to apply some of our basic coding skills to a network visualization platform called Gephi. After conducting a multi-modal literature review of existing examples and projects, we tagged and cataloged projects based on their use of technology, their platform, their use of ‘space’, their collaborations, funding sources, and goals. We are hoping to do two types of visualizations: one network will show how a sampling of projects are related, via their tags, to show similar trends among existing projects. The second will attempt to more concretely visualize how space is currently portrayed, and expose gaps as to how geographers could better visualize and represent relational space in the future.

The thread of comments that follows will include our reflections on this process. This project is not meant to be exhaustive or definitive. In the spirit of the digital humanities, we are approaching this as an experiment, a chance to play, and perhaps a chance to fail. It is iterative, and we are learning as we go, even if there is nothing conclusive to say at the end.

Join us through these comments, reflections, screen shots, frustrations and insights!

This month, I feel very lucky to be joining a writing workshop of 8 of the most inspired/inspiring women I have ever worked with. We are working with Victoria Lawson, [who has more credits to her name than are even worth mentioning here] in a Writing for Publication workshop. The final product of this class will be a submission to a journal article. I have chosen to aim high, and am going to submit an article to the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Wish me luck.

Vicky’s advice to us is to write every day. Don’t put it off. Make space for it. Protect that space.

There are a million and one excuses not to write. One of our colleagues just had a baby – surely that is reason enough to put the pen down [or laptop, as it were]. Others have relationship concerns, physical ailments, teaching conflicts and expectations, discomfort with the journal writing process… there are a million and one reasons.

But, today, I am sitting with one that I have not yet figured out how to navigate.

Grief.

I cannot talk myself out of this excuse. I cannot just nudge myself, close a browser, turn off my internet, eliminate distractions. This is one that I have confronted throughout the year, and has reared its head, hidden and haunted me in various ways for the last 9 months. When I was first beginning to write my thesis, a dear friend of mine was brutally murdered. His murder goes unsolved, to this day, and it probably forever will.

At the time, I found solace in writing. The thesis was a project I could devote myself to, with a clear purpose, clear deadline, and clear outcome. I would write. I would argue my points. I would tell a compelling story. I would defend the thesis. I would eventually publish.

Well, here I am, trying to complete that final step by writing a journal article drawing on one of the primary chapters of the thesis. Except that today, [MLK Jr.'s birthday, Obama's second inauguration, a 'day off' which is supposed to be wildly productive], I am feeling blinded by lingering wisps of grief. Tendrils of my memories of Sam are pulling at me, away from the thoughts of nonprofits, discourses of deservingness and subjectivity. Towards future memories, yet to be created, where his absence will be felt glaringly: the first of our friends’ weddings, reunions, eventual babies and families, his brother’s graduation.

So how to reconcile these? There are a million reasons not to write. I suppose I should appreciate that even in this grief, in these memories, are encouragements to write, even if not for today’s stated purpose: this journal article.

I shall attempt to find a bit of focus, a trait that my dear friend proudly lacked. His joyous, frenetic attitude brought unpredictable adventures, projects and obstacles. Perhaps a scattered brain is ok in this moment. It might take me to new places in my writing for which I cannot plan. Or, I will just go home and knit and watch movies. Both of these seem potentially ok, though one is more acceptable in the path of academia. Though as I’ve always said, my life is not about me as an academic. I hold multiple roles in multiple communities. One of those communities is about 3,000 miles away, continuing to navigate this same grief as we hold it everyday.

In the spirit of Loader and Mercea’s  claim that “testimony, story telling, greetings and rhetoric can all be employed as discursive forms of democratic engagement” (2011, 761), I was inspired to write a weekly response piece for one of my seminars in a slightly more narrative form.[1]

The acquisition of an iPhone or access to a social networking site does not determine the engagement of citizens (Loader and Mercea 2011, 761).

#endworldhunger
#anti-racism

“What’s on your mind?”

Habermas’ public sphere has not materialized. Web 1.0 never even had a chance. A sphere free of social difference and politics? That would and will not come to pass, regardless of the digital space and technology. Web 2.0 – does it necessarily lead to ‘politics’ and ‘democracy’? What do these terms even mean or look like in practice?

what do I mean when I talk of ‘the political’ anyway?

…a more open conception of democratic citizenship…open instead to a more personalized and self-actualizing notion of citizenship… that recognizes the multiplicity of identity positions that citizens are required to grapple with in contemporary societies, where the spheres for democratic engagement reach into the private spaces to enable the personal to become political (Loader and Mercea, 761).

The personal becoming political. Reaching into private spaces. I retreat to my screen, a safe place to write. Yet I don’t have the courage to speak up in a crowd. To stand up as a worker, for labor, for my own politics. My politics is by making my home public. I bring people to my table to build community, compassion, relationships. My personal becomes… political? these politics. what do they look like .  what work do they do? through small actions, I activate changes, make small challenges to larger systems. even in  questioning the larger structure and system, I grapple.  I become political.

Although various modes of communication, institutional structures, or technological systems may appear to remain stable over time, in fact mediation is a continuous process of countless small adaptations – interrelated reconfigurations and remediations that gradually produce new practices, artifacts, and social arrangements, and thus whole infrastructures, like the changes that occur when small parts of a building or machine are replaced over time (Lievrouw 2011, 234).

Ok. So I enact the political through small change over time. Technology, society, institutions, individuals, collectives… we reconfigure and remediate our systems and content in a dialectic process of mediation. Constantly adapting, constantly reworking, constantly producing new knowledge and ways of knowing; we create new frameworks and technologies and simultaneously construct new epistemologies. This is the making of knowledge politics. Again, the political.

New spatial media knowledge politics… [are] deeply intertwined in the political-economic and institutional contexts of the types of organizations [profiled here]. The hardware, software and other digital capabilities of new spatial media are of course part of the story, but also deeply implicated are the material and discursive contexts in which NGOs, community based organizations and civic engagement groups operate (Elwood and Leszczynski 2012, 13).

Purchasing an iPhone does not make an activist an activist. A reconfiguration of that technology to help make sense and remediate the artifacts, encounters, interactions, practices and relationships of our current time, current material/discursive context… this can activate the activist. This can open up private spaces for political expression. This can enable narrative to tell a political story. Multiple forms of rhetoric, multiple forms of democratic engagement.

Access to sites of citizen(ship) does not determine the engagement of social networks or the acquisition of an iPhone.

This weekend I had the immense honor and opportunity to participate in the Imagining America annual conference. ”A consortium of 90 colleges and universities, and their partners, IA emphasizes the possibilities of humanities, arts, and design in knowledge-generating initiatives. Such activity can span disciplines through collaborations with public health, environmental issues, community education, neighborhood development, and others. We also value the knowledge and creativity-generating components of partnerships among people whose everyday lives produce different kinds of expertise. So the scholar in the library, the teacher in the classroom, the organizer in the community – each provides different expertise that together is greater than the sum of its parts.”

This year’s convening was titled, “Linked Fates and Futures: Communities and Campuses as Equitable Partners?, and emphasized creative and imaginative explorations into partnerships between communities (broadly conceived), and campuses (also broadly conceived). Many sessions explored highly successful, generative productive and justice-oriented partnerships between institutions of higher-ed and groups or organizations rooted in communities throughout the US. Other sessions explored vocational roles and how practitioners at different sites in institutions can help activate justice, learning, and access in equitable ways. Still other sessions were specifically tailored for graduate students and how we can find support across networks to support publicly engaged scholarship. An undercurrent of the whole conference is an understanding that the traditional academy does not have language or structures to adequately value or evaluate community or publicly engaged scholarship.

One of the COOLEST things I saw all weekend was Nick Sousanis‘ dissertation work: through the education department at Columbia University, he is publishing the first ever comic-form dissertation.

I presented a poster from my own work with Youth Grow in Seattle, exploring how graduate students can play a unique role in meeting and advancing the work of youth-oriented non profit programs. Specifically, I proposed three realms for graduate students to contribute: through practical research that advances the programming and capacity of the organization; through caring and reflexive mentorship with youth; through creative relationships with the organization and youth, wherein students can leverage their hybrid positions as volunteer/student, tap into the resource-rich university, and recommend new projects that can help link youth to the organization in more effective ways. Let me expand on this (especially because it is the direction I am currently envisioning my dissertation work would take).

Oh! But before I do, I wanted to explore the crazy-eyed look that most conference participants gave when they learned I was a geographer. It looked like this:
As a consortium that caters more to the arts and humanities, I was a bit out of place as a graduate student in geography. As someone who thinks about space, place, scale and power, my language and research questions were a bit out of the element for others.

Of course, I do not want to see my research questions as existing in a vacuum. So, the confluence between my identity as a geographer, as a scholar-activist, and as a community member were all at play at this conference. I found myself reflecting a great deal about how I can, as always, strive to find greater balance and synthesis between these different worlds I walk between every day.

That said, I have also spent some time now preparing for my preliminary examination in the geography department. This will operate independently of my other work in community and in public scholarship, and, coming off of a weekend of enthusiastically thinking about how to find even more linkages between my interests and spaces of interest, I now find that I have to siphon off specific time to address my prelims with specific language that will appeal to my committee.

This brings me back to my dissertation research and interests. While I do not anticipate writing a comic book for my dissertation, (I wish!), I think that the questions and applications of my work are important and worth sharing with different audiences.

My interests lie in tracing how discourses and ideologies of impoverishment, middle class-ness, and social difference simultaneously inform the landscape of social service provisioning in the United States while also shaping particular programmatic decisions and frameworks for individual non-profit and CBOs. Following this more structural approach, I want to trace how non-profit programs help shape the everyday lived geographies of program participants (in my case, young people). Beyond this, how do youth participants see themselves as active agents in the spaces of non-profit programs, in larger urban networks, and as politicized, racialized, gendered, classed, (un)deserving subjects.

I think that there is a really interest possibility to interject technology studies into this work. How are organizations incorporating technology into their “empowerment” work? Additionally, how could feminist media making and technology studies inform the ways that young people self-identity and internalize questions of subjectivity?

This gets me to, I think, a really productive place between my public scholarship / activist tendencies, and my interest in theoretical and intellectual frameworks for thinking about social difference and inequality. It all comes down to this:

- – - – - – - – - – - young people matter – - – - – - – - – - -
- – - – - – - – - – - technology matters – - – - – - – - – - – -
- – - space is in a constant state of *becoming* – - -
AND
- – - relationships and community building matter – - -
- – - I don’t want to be in graduate school forever – - -
- – - – I want my scholarship to matter. to count. – - – -

Oh, and I want to go to Scandinavia. Let’s make that happen, dissertation work, ok? Thanks.

I realize it has been many moons since I last wrote here.

Some bloggers might feel apologetic for that. But I have spent a lot of time over the last few months thinking about habits, how our habits intercept our work, lives and relationships, and how to try and look at these habits without judgement. That said, I have tried to observe patterns and habits around my own writing without laying too much judgement. What I can say is this: I spent the winter and spring months writing like crazy as I completed my masters thesis. I was incredibly disciplined in this endeavor, setting aside 4-5 hour chunks 3 days a a week, venturing down to the same coffee shop on my bicycle, ordering a delicious made-to-order cup of coffee and plugging in my headphones. I wrote each chapter on schedule, and felt very little stress throughout the entire process. That is, until I realized that my system for organizing my citations had failed me at the very end, and I had to enter 10 pages of bibliographic citations by hand. Yeesh.

So now, months later, having submitted the 120 page document proudly to my committee and my family and friends, I have written very little. Scratch that. I have written zilch. Zero. Nothing. At. All.

This does bring me, if not shame, then mild embarrassment. I had grand visions for spending the summer drafting a journal article from my master’s thesis; writing a policy memo for the organization I volunteered with for my fieldwork; reading lots for my prelims this winter and writing copious notes. Alas, my pen was dry. The only writing I did, at all, was to jot down notes of my favorite recipes that I cooked. I also wrote some nice wedding cards. Ok? Ok.

Now I return to the blogosphere to whet me palette again for writing. I have an intensive 2 years of writing ahead of me: back to seminars, prelims statements, prelim exams, grant proposals, generals statements, general exams, dissertation proposal, etc. I also have many conferences on my docket, which I hope will galvanize my interest, intention, and attention towards nuanced pieces of my research and interests. Transitioning into the PhD from the Master’s in my program is historically very challenging for many students. The expectations are vague (ha! what else is new), the direction is unclear, and the projects are not as concrete as in the MA portion of the program.

However, the two conferences ahead of me should be very helpful in focusing my attention. The first, Imagining America, takes places in New York City. It will be an excellent opportunity for me to immerse myself in a conference about public scholarship: the role for graduate students, the potential for collaboration with local organizations, and envisioning the future of scholarship and partnership between universities and publics. I will be presenting a poster reflecting on my own work as a budding scholar-activist who works between and within the university and Seattle based non-profit sector. I will also forecast and provide some recommendations for future collaborations and ways that young people can more directly affect the direction of organizations.

The second conference is the 6th Race, Ethnicity and Place Conference, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I will be presenting on a session titled, (En)countering Space, Place, and Agency:  Everyday Youth Geographies, which will, “explore how children and youth live, navigate, and (re)define the linkages of race and ethnicity, space and place.” Here, I will reflect on how the young people at Youth Grow, where I did my fieldwork, are positioned and racialized as “good workers”. Through attention to middle class aspirations and work ethic, the youth are delineated between deserving- and undeserving-ness. This paper session will explore the nuances around how the youth assert their own agency and identity amidst very subtle, though powerful, disciplining.

Ah-ha. There. I’ve written. A bit. There is more to come. I also still plan to achieve all of the things I hoped to do this summer, just in the next 2 weeks. It is entirely possible to consolidate 2 months’ worth of work into 2 weeks, right? I believe it is. With less time we are more productive.

I approach this fall hoping to stay excited and open about new directions . I don’t yet know how I will articulate the three main contributions of my committee to my PhD direction, but I’m sure I will get there… [urban inequalities + new poverty studies + ideology/power]? [critical race theory + youth / technology + subjectivities]? [critical youth geographies + urban inequalities + discourse/ideology]? Oy. Too many options.

I’m excited to read and write on all of these things and start to pinpoint my identity as a scholar! Also, on the public scholarship front, I continue to operate under the belief that scholarship is experienced through everyday lived experience. I am learning and sharing and teaching and researching through all of my activities and activism: through community building, my mentorship with Seattle Youth Garden Works, my co-organizing for Eat for Equity Seattle, my involvement with the Public Scholarship program, my contributions to the Women Who Rock project, my travels to conferences… it all connects. I think this recognition is what enables me to have the energy, zest, and excitement to live a balanced graduate student life. So, here goes another year, with new transitions and expectations. And a lot of writing.

After many months of scheming and playing with different web tools, I finally have a professional web presence on wordpress! Drawing on inspiration from many of my peers, I hope to update this blog with my reflections as a graduate student at the University of Washington, and as an active, community-loving resident of Seattle! This site will also serve as a place to reference my CV, projects, and interests. Please follow along! I welcome comments and feedback.