Reimagining Knowledge: Research, Teaching, and Publicly Engaged Humanities Projects

Among the many issues within academia, one that is particularly frustrating for us in the humanities is the ways various institutional forces demand that our work fit into narrower and narrower categories. Within our disciplines we shrink into our fields, eras, methodologies, texts, claims, and politics, staking out smaller and smaller territories so that we may assert our individual value to our departments and institutions. Yet, such a tendency runs contrary to the goals of humanities research and education, which emphasize the constant reevaluation and critical exploration of our world through a plurality of texts, art or media forms, experiences, and more. At a time when the federal government has put such work so directly in its crosshairs (along with its flagrant disregard for both the realities and actual lives of so many millions), we should be not just wary of but actively resistant to the ways our institutions and the academy at large separate us and demand we produce knowledge within our individual and narrow expertise. Now is the time to reimagine our work as a collective endeavor that sees us co-producing knowledge across our disciplines as well as with our students and communities.

Although my doctorate is nominally in “English,” my dissertation, Subcultural Textuality: Skateboarding and the Politics of Subcultural Media, is a diachronic look at the skateboarding subculture and its engagement with media forms beginning in the mid-1970s and going through today. In various lecture halls, conference rooms, libraries, breweries, and wherever else academics gather to discuss our niche scholarly interests, I am often referred to as the “skateboarding guy” (although I should clarify that I do not actually know how to skateboard). Despite my reservations about the way the academy forces us to categorize our work, I wear the “skateboarding guy” title pretty proudly. My dissertation is not narrow, but rather interdisciplinary. By looking at the skateboarding subculture and its mediations in various historical moments, I combine textual analysis, media history, cultural studies, and other critical approaches in order to interrogate not only skateboarding and its politics, but also the politics of different media platforms and their supposedly subcultural potentials. I am extremely thankful that my graduate education empowered me to combine these different methodologies in order to explore what has long been a personal interest. However, in that sense, my project is no anomaly (“skateboarding guy from an English department” jokes notwithstanding). As humanities scholars, what we explore is always deeply personal. We can only combine texts, historical periods, and methodologies in ways that make sense to us and us alone. This is what pushes the humanities forward and why interdisciplinary work is so essential to our continued critical interrogation of the world around us.

And yet, as much as we value the unique aspects of our frequently solitary research, this work requires going beyond traditional scholarship and reimagining how our interests intersect with our identities as both educators and community members. For example, as a Visiting Professor at SUNY Morrisville, my various courses, whether introductory composition, literature, film studies, or otherwise, seek to have students not merely “learn” material, but also seriously reflect on their own interests. Since my field is film studies and media history, I frequently ask students to consider the texts and media forms they regularly engage with in order to interrogate those experiences and complicate our notions of what is worthy of rigorous academic analysis. My desire for students to think, discuss, and write about their interests and media habits stems in part from my own love of skateboarding media, from its magazines and videos to the Jackass franchiseand Tony Hawk video game series, none of which are traditionally “academic” fare. In making this a regular approach for every humanities course I teach, my goal is to encourage students to see not just their own interests, but also–through various in-class exercises and discussions–those of everyone in the classroom as worthy of the same intellectual rigor. This plays an important role in setting the expectation that one of the most valuable aspects of a humanities education is that it empowers students to recognize the agency of themselves and others, becoming part of a community where learning happens while we are together. As with my research motivations, I am hardly unique in this. Still, it is a shift in perspective for how those of us in the humanities can envision our research and teaching as interconnected.

However, I also believe that truly practicing this means going beyond the classroom and engaging with the communities we live and work in. One of the best choices I made in my graduate education was getting involved in a publicly engaged humanities project. Write Out is a community writing collective that runs weekly creative writing workshops at Syracuse-area afterschool programs that serve students traditionally underrepresented in higher education, including immigrants, New Americans, and young girls of color. Along with Lauren Cooper, one of the current Engaged Humanities Postdoctoral Fellows, I serve as one of Write Out’s Community Program Directors for our team that works with the 9-12 year-olds at Girl’s Inc, an organization whose mission is to inspire all girls to be strong, smart, and bold, and runs their programming at the Syracuse YWCA. Since Write Out began in an MFA class in Syracuse University’s English department, our mentors often have some connection to the school, frequently graduate and undergraduate students as well as faculty and staff. But one of the most fundamental aspects of Write Out’s mission is that it is not school. We do not seek to go into community spaces and “teach” young students to be in some way more like us. Instead, it is about recognizing these students and their already profound cultural agency. Our weekly activities emphasize that students can express themselves however they desire. Such creative expressions can be any form of writing in whatever mode or language a student wishes, as well as drawings, skits, songs, dances, or anything else. Write Out mentors help students however they may need it. This could very well be help with spelling and grammar or to write while a student dictates, but it could also be to help a student generate ideas, simply talk with them about their day, or even be a prop or character in the work a student wants to share. Having students share their work loudly and proudly is foundational for Write Out. Not only do we do so during every week of programming, but we also publish annual chapbooks of student work and celebrate them with end-of-year readings open to the public. Thus, we seek to empower students who are traditionally underserved by existing models of education while making reading and writing far more joyful experiences.

It can certainly be tempting, given the differences between academic research, teaching at institutions of higher education, and doing engaged work in community spaces, to view these things as separate. However, it is more fruitful to recognize that these three modes, while distinct, are very much intertwined. My academic interests directly influence my pedagogy in the college classroom as well as my motivations and practices for co-producing new forms of knowledge and creative works with my students and fellow community members. In doing so, I seek to reimagine the humanities as a collective undertaking that can potentially wield far more power at a time when so much great work that celebrates diversity and interrogates various societal injustices and inequities is being threatened. This is harder than it sounds. It requires us to think responsibly about our communities and approach our work in a new way that does not prioritize our individual goals (which we have for so long and in so many ways been told are more important than anything). Regardless, if you truly believe in the work and what it can accomplish, it is always worth it.