I am a master’s student whose web of projects allow me to hold multiple commitments, audiences, and throughlines. I present to the 5 practices and 3 affective modes that constitute my work in Cultural Studies.
Practices:
Affective Modes:
Via popular writing, I have used my training in Cultural Studies and activist roles in Seattle to make a critical intervention in leftist activist communities all around the US: I state the necessity of naming and analyzing the cultural aspect of activism alongside the publicized movement goals of ending white supremacy, anti-black racism, patriarchy, sexism, capitalism, transphobia, homophobia, and so forth. I interrogate cultural practices and beliefs by offering critical theory, performance studies, and affect theory as another way to work through their shortcomings. I continue to be inspired by the very first essay I read in pre-orientation, by Lawrence Grossberg: “The project of cultural studies is to tell better stories about what’s going on, and to begin to enable imagining new possibilities for a future that can be reached from the present– one more humane and just than that promised by the trajectories we find ourselves on” (Grossberg 242).
The first formations of this thinking appeared in my final paper for BCULST 500, “Performing Social Justice”. This was a critique based largely upon the work of academic theorists, such as Foucault, Edward Said, J.K. Gibson-Graham, and Andrea Smith. While I felt like I had a compelling argument, I decided to shift my future work on this topic to more mainstream formats so that my audiences could engage with it and give me feedback. I published “Excommunicate Me From the Church of Social Justice” on Catalyst Wedding Co, and its follow up, “Why I’m Starting to Fear My Fellow Social Justice Activists” on YES! Magazine, and intentionally referenced on-the-ground activists and Black feminists, such as adrienne maree brown, Alicia Garza, and Ruby Sales. I expected little to no readership, and thought it would be good to get publication experience, no matter how small the platform. To my surprise, both articles went viral, and I was invited to a string of local and national radio interviews to talk about accountability and self-reflection within leftist movements for liberation. In leftist activist communities, I began to be considered a cultural activist; I was named to the Bitch 50 and was invited to speak at various arts and cultural events around Seattle (Straight White Men talkback, Sung Yim Author Interview, CRUX: Rosy Quartz Flexy Futures).
Spreading my ideas and scholarship out to a broader audience allowed me to entangle myself within my queer/trans, people of color, activist communities in Seattle like never before. Before I published my essays, I had been involved in creating a comprehensive trans resource guide for King County, and had also given talks about being minoritized in the tech industry. I decided to create a professional website to translate the relevancy of my student work to activist-minded organizations, and included a Contact Me form. I have received numerous messages of support and inquiries, allowing me to have setup more formal community engagements, such as an advising session with the deans of the UW School of Medicine, a Parisol salon, and a workshop with the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic Violence.
One aspect I’ve really appreciated about the flexibility of the MACS program is the acknowledgment that artistic projects, not only traditional textual research, produce valuable knowledge. While being the target of gender discrimination led me to abandon a career as a visual designer, I have continued to hone my design skills by taking on academic and community projects that require a visual design element. Example projects include What Does BLM Entail?, a colleague’s final paper I turned into a zine, An Ethics of Thinking, a poster I designed and printed to draw out the salient points in J.K. Gibson Graham’s A Postcapitalist Politics, and the Final Collection, a colorful PDF I created to visualize my research proposals. While all of these projects could have easily remained texts, I believe that representing their ideas more creatively can offer more modes of engagement and inquiry outside of the academy.
While at UWB, I was so fortunate to work as the Poetic Operations Collaborative research assistant for professor micha cárdenas. In Winter 2017, we developed The Boundaries Project, a digital security social media campaign for communities most affected by Trump. I designed the website and Instagram posts sensitive to the specific access needs of women, LGBTQI people, people of color, immigrants, and Muslims. In Spring 2017, I shot and edited three videos for the #Stronger project, which aims to develop a decolonial vision of futures of health, fitness and strength for trans and gender non-conforming people. As someone with a tech background, I wish to continue to use and build those skills to support our communities, while finding ways to validate this work within the academy. So much of what’s included in this archive represents small, creative projects where I have not waited to be considered an expert or be granted institutional legitimization.
Being a graduate student includes having to conduct work that is more or less traditionally academic. As I complete these requirements, I keep in mind the white cis male-dominated history of inaccessibility, violence and genocide that western academia is founded upon. As a student, I will say or do things that take away power and elitism from the academy. For example, I operate on the belief that publicly engaged scholars such as myself must follow a set of principles that acknowledge community participants as equal collaborators and co-creators of knowledge. I write about this commitment in my Publicly Engaged Graduate Education (PAGE) blog post, Academics Against the Privilege of Academia. When I have submitted and presented at conferences, I am explicit about the value of the contributions of everyone else in the room, especially if they are not in academia (Performing White Scholarship, Allied Media Conference: Data and Power, Radical Networks: “Critical Design, Black Geographies, and Critical Packet Sniffing”). I designed a hoodie for the UWB graduate student organization G-LEAD (Graduate Leaders for Equity & Difference) that pokes fun at academia’s affinity for big words in its nearly unintelligible slogan: ALTERITY + FUTURITY. For my elective course Performance & Belonging: Citizenship, Culture & Identity, I created the “Woker Than Thou” syllabus to challenge and inspire students who identify as activists to think beyond identity and self-righteousness.
The academy severely disciplines its subjects into professionalism and creates the fantasy that the scholar stands alone in their brilliance by obscuring the other people and outside knowledges from which the scholar is always drawing. In my scholarly work, I call attention to these processes without worrying, because I hold a deep ambivalence at being associated with the university and having to operate under its regulations. Freed from the tenure track dream, I have been able to pursue interdisciplinary, multi-modal creative projects that further the political responsibilities of Cultural Studies and lead me further into a network of community collaborations. In all of these projects, I have tried to make them as accessible as possible to non-academics while maintaining a base level of legibility in the academy through strategic partnership and language. I’ve chosen to frame and showcase my work in this way to model an alternative mode of being in the academy that doesn’t rely on expertise, credentials, or permission. I hope that my portfolio expresses these sentiments and values, and I am so grateful to my professors, mentors, co-thinkers, and cohort in the MACS program for activating me and building a foundation for future change work.
Grossberg, Lawrence. “On the political responsibilities of cultural studies.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, www.academia.edu/2407235/On_the_political_responsibilities_of_cultural_studies.