How Immigrant Farmers Build Resilience

Immigrant farmers build resilience by drawing on deep traditional knowledge and by practicing diversified farming that helps buffer climate shocks. Some programs are helping farmers balance competition and collaboration, turning individual efforts into benefits for the whole community (Meenar and Hoover, 2012; Reynolds, 2015). Immigrant farmers are essential to building climate havens because they bring diverse, innovative agricultural practices from their home countries, many of which have already faced severe climate impacts, including extreme weather. Their expertise is key to building resilient and sustainable local food systems. These immigrant farms illustrate how alternative food systems foster “innovation” in food production methods that prioritize community needs through “community-based cross-cultural connections” (Klocker et al., 2018; Wekerle and Classens, 2015), “social inclusion” (Meenar and Hoover, 2012), and participation in the “alternative food movement” (Minkoff-Zern and Sloat, 2017).

Research on immigrant community gardens has grown (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2017). Farmers’ markets have emerged as trust-based, transparent platforms that enable immigrant farmers to trade with diverse communities. While these markets offer valuable opportunities for immigrant farmers to sell their produce, they also present significant challenges, especially for smallholders. These challenges include navigating bureaucratic systems (Minkoff-Zern and Sloat, 2017; Minkoff-Zern and Sloat, 2020), managing complex race relations (Jentsch et al., 2007), securing access to land (Calo and De Master, 2016), and overcoming structural and institutional barriers, particularly for those new to farming (Calo, 2018; Sowerwine et al., 2015). Urban residents can support immigrant farms by buying local, culturally diverse produce or volunteering at community gardens. Beyond their social and economic contributions, immigrant farmers’ ecological practices further highlight their central role in shaping resilient climate havens.

Sustainable Practices in Action

Immigrant farms strive to provide culturally preferred foods and establish trade networks. They also create self-sustaining enclaves that emphasize both resilience and self-reliance. Immigrant farmers bring valuable agroecological knowledge through practices such as crop rotation and mixed farming. These biodiversity-focused approaches promote social well-being, conserve water, and help communities adapt to climate change, strengthening local food systems and the resilience of climate havens. Immigrant and refugee gardeners draw on traditional knowledge to maintain diverse crops, minimize synthetic inputs, and farm on a small scale, supporting food sovereignty and ecosystem resilience in new environments (Montenegro de Wit, 2016; Minkoff-Zern et al., 2020). Immigrant farmers also use conservation tillage, which leaves at least 30% of the previous crop’s residue on the surface to reduce erosion. They additionally practice cover cropping and return of organic matter to the soil, practices that enhance carbon sequestration and improve soil health. These practices demonstrate that ecological innovation is not confined to laboratories or universities but is already embedded in the everyday work of immigrant communities.

Overcoming Barriers

However, immigrant farmers still face systemic barriers to policy support, local knowledge, and the upfront costs of adopting new techniques, highlighting the need for justice-focused initiatives. Critics of the conventional food system contend that capitalist logic disproportionately harms immigrants and labor migrants, thereby undermining their contributions to community livelihoods (De Haan, 1999; Alkon and Mares, 2012). In the United States, immigrant farmers face not only institutional racism but also limited access to agricultural opportunities (Minkoff-Zern and Sloat, 2017). Many immigrant farmers persist in creating alternative agricultural spaces despite these barriers. These alternatives often take the form of small-scale, diversified, family-run farms that struggle to secure federal aid. Some critics question whether urban agriculture can effectively integrate immigrant farmers into business alliances, arguing that intense market competition leaves little room for immigrant farms to thrive (McClintock, 2014).

Despite a growing body of literature on the inclusive role of immigrant farms and the importance of justice in food security, there has been limited research on fostering cooperation between immigrant farms, alternative food networks, and other producers. The creation of climate havens necessitates collaboration between immigrant and other ethnic groups. However, many studies on alternative food systems fail to account for the distinct experiences of immigrant farmers, often grouping them with other minority populations (Flora et al., 2012; MacGregor et al., 2019). This lack of attention to immigrant-specific characteristics undermines their ability to address climate justice, which in turn hampers agricultural adaptation at both the grassroots and governance levels. Furthermore, it threatens livelihoods by disrupting food markets, water management systems, and climate-smart farming infrastructure (Yazar et al., 2024; Morton, 2007; Howden et al., 2007).

Further Direction

Climate havens enable immigrant farmers to develop resilient farming systems that optimize resource use and strengthen immigrants’ long-term survival. These observations raise broader questions: To what extent do immigrant farmers, as an alternative mode of food provisioning, influence a city’s ability to function and adapt to climate change? How can immigrant farms and their agroecological knowledge be integrated into urban food production while scaling up urban agriculture? What strategies can incentivize a more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable food system? And how can food security be enhanced through collaboration? Understanding how these farms serve surrounding communities is key to envisioning more just, inclusive, and sustainable urban futures. As cities position themselves as climate havens, the knowledge and labor of immigrant farmers remind us that true resilience extends beyond technology to encompass culture, politics, and community.

Author Bio

Ning Zou is a PhD candidate in the Division of Environmental Science at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Her research focuses on urban resilience, social networks, and food justice. She is a publicly engaged researcher who has built deeper connections with stakeholders actively involved in the local food supply chain in Syracuse. Ning aims to co-produce knowledge with local residents and ensure that the benefits are returned to the community.

References

Alkon, A. H., & Mares, T. M. (2012). Food sovereignty in US food movements: radical visions and neoliberal constraints. Agriculture and Human Values, 29(3), 347–359. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-012-9356-z

Calo, A. (2018). How knowledge deficit interventions fail to resolve beginning farmer challenges. Agriculture and Human Values, 35(2), 367–381. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-017-9832-6

Calo, A., & De Master, K. T. (2016). After the incubator: Factors impeding land access along the path from farmworker to proprietor. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 6(2), 111-127.

De Haan, A. (1999). Livelihoods and poverty: The role of migration – a critical review of the migration literature. The Journal of Development Studies, 36(2), 1–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220389908422619

Flora, J. L., Emery, M., Thompson, D., Prado-Meza, C. M., & Flora, C. B. (2012). New immigrants in local food systems: Two Iowa cases. The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 19(1), 119-134.

Jentsch, B., De Lima, P., & MacDonald, B. R. I. A. N. (2007). Migrant workers in rural Scotland: ‘going to the middle of nowhere’. International Journal on Multicultural Societies, 9(1), 35-53.

Judelsohn, A., Orom, H., Kim, I., Na Sa, A. B., Khan, H., Devito, R., Diaz Del Carpio, R. O., & Raja, S. (2017). Planning the City of Good (and New) Neighbours: Refugees’ Experiences of the Food Environment in Buffalo, New York. Built Environment (London. 1978), 43(3), 402–416. https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.43.3.402

Hirschman, E. C., Bourgin, W., Castilla, A., Glover, C., Justice, C., Munoz, M., … & Toomer, O. (2024). Social and Economic Considerations for Creating Sustainable Climate Change Haven Communities. Journal of Environmental Protection, 15(1), 76-93.

Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (2017). At home in inner-city immigrant community gardens. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 32(1), 13–28. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-015-9491-0

Howden, S. M., Soussana, J. F., Tubiello, F. N., Chhetri, N., Dunlop, M., & Meinke, H. (2007). Adapting agriculture to climate change. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 104(50), 19691-19696.

Klocker, N., Head, L., Dun, O., & Spaven, T. (2018). Experimenting with agricultural diversity: Migrant knowledge as a resource for climate change adaptation. Journal of Rural Studies, 57, 13-24.

MacGregor, S., Walker, C., & Katz-Gerro, T. (2019). ‘It’s what I’ve always done’: Continuity and change in the household sustainability practices of Somali immigrants in the UK. Geoforum, 107, 143–153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.09.013

McClintock, N. (2014). Radical, reformist, and garden-variety neoliberal: coming to terms with urban agriculture’s contradictions. Local Environment, 19(2), 147–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2012.752797

Meenar, M., & Hoover, B. (2012). Community Food Security via Urban Agriculture: Understanding People, Place, Economy, and Accessibility from a Food Justice Perspective. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 3(1), 143–160. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2012.031.013

Minkoff-Zern, L.-A., Welsh, R., & Ludden, M. T. (2020). Immigrant farmers, sustainable practices: growing ecological and racial diversity in alternative agrifood spaces. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 44(7), 947–972. https://doi.org/10.1080/21683565.2019.1666076

Minkoff-Zern, L.-A., & Sloat, S. (2017). A new era of civil rights? Latino immigrant farmers and exclusion at the United States Department of Agriculture. Agriculture and Human Values, 34(3), 631–643. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-016-9756-6

Minkoff-Zern, L. A., & Sloat, S. (2020). The Immigrant-Food Nexus: Borders, Labor, and Identity in North America.

Montenegro de Wit, M. (2016). Are we losing diversity? Navigating ecological, political, and epistemic dimensions of agrobiodiversity conservation. Agriculture and Human Values, 33(3), 625–640. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-015-9642-7

Morton, J. F. (2007). impact of climate change on smallholder and subsistence agriculture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – PNAS, 104(50), 19680–19685. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0701855104

Reynolds, K. (2015). Disparity Despite Diversity: Social Injustice in New York City’s Urban Agriculture System. Antipode, 47(1), 240–259. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12098

Sowerwine, J., Getz, C., & Peluso, N. (2015). The myth of the protected worker: Southeast Asian micro-farmers in California agriculture. Agriculture and Human Values, 32(4), 579–595. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9578-3

Wekerle, G. R., & Classens, M. (2015). Food production in the city: (re)negotiating land, food and property. Local Environment, 20(10), 1175–1193. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2015.1007121

Yazar, M., Baykal Fide, E., & Daloglu Cetinkaya, I. (2024). The nested hierarchy of urban vulnerability within land use policies fails to address climate injustices in Turkey. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 26(1), 30-46.

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Eduardo Kac, Adsum, 2019

Adsum is a 1x1x1cm glass cube with a series of symbols laser-engraved inside. The symbols, described as a “spatial poem,” are designed to be interpreted in multiple directions, a response to the multiple gravitational paradigms the cube will experience (“Adsum” 20). The hourglass and infinity symbols can be read as representing human and cosmic time scales, respectively, indicating the role Adsum plays in bringing the two together as it occupies the lunar surface ad infinitum. On his website, Kac details the five phases of the project, from early proof-of-concept to final sculpture. Over the course of these five phases, various preliminary versions of Adsum traveled to the International Space Station, the lunar-orbiting Orion spacecraft, and the lunar surface itself. Through his detailed description of the years-long process, Kac demonstrates his deep knowledge and enthusiasm for his craft. 

While the project of creating artwork for the moon is undoubtedly fascinating, Kac seems far less interested in examining the ideologies which underpin his work or the systems making it possible. No phase of the project would have been possible without the vast amount of resources expended by both governmental and private space programs in the name of capital or national supremacy. However, rather than critiquing these systems, Adsum reinforces a kind of human exceptionalism under which expansion into outer space is imperative. The title of the work, Adsum, means “Here I am” in Latin, equivalent to the “Here!” of a roll call. Kac states that he considers the title a response to the phrase “ad astra” (“to the stars”) commonly used in reference to space travel (“Art on the Moon” 20). It remains unclear whether the responding “I” refers to a homogenized collective humanity or the artist himself. 

By anticipating a call to humanity from the stars, Adsum makes the need to respond by expanding beyond the planet Earth appear self-evident. Kac certainly believes in this inevitability, anticipating somewhat conceitedly that far-future “space archaeologists and astro-art historians” will be able to find and appreciate his work (“Art on the Moon” 23). Indeed, Kac’s space artwork contributes to the ideological projects of the Deleuzian “royal science,” defined by Braidotti as “institutionally implemented and well-funded” science which is “compatible with the economic imperatives of advanced capitalism” (47). He receives support from this royal science in the form of the space program, while producing work reinforcing its cultural or aesthetic necessity. In the process, his own brand is elevated. While Kac’s words frame expansion into outer space as humanity’s inevitable future, an attention to his collaboration with the royal sciences reveal his active role in making that future a reality. 

In a period of ecological and social upheaval like the one we live in, progressivist narratives of space exploration appear particularly troubling. Kac’s participation in narratives of outer space as the “final frontier,” in which Adsum stands in for the artist as a kind of pioneer for a “new cultural phase in humanity’s history,” suggest an evasion of the many entangled issues that lie inside the Earth’s biosphere. (“Art on the Moon” 21). Kac frames this evasion as a heroic break from tradition, pointing out that, “The entire history of art is predicated on this planet’s gravity, on this planet’s atmosphere and temperature variations, on this planet’s ability to partially shield itself from cosmic radiation” (“Art on the Moon” 21). In creating artwork for the moon, he seeks to transcend these previously implicit limitations and expand the possibilities of what forms art can take. However, the shared material conditions of Earthbound art and Earthbound life are part of what enables such far-reaching engagement between the two. Kac’s Adsum, despite being designed to live on the moon, does not bind itself to any location; rather, it imagines itself as part of a movement, one of humanity’s first steps on a new journey of cosmic discovery. The work’s placelessness untethers it from the conditions of the present and projects a future in which the work’s significance can be maximally realized. 

In the end, my purpose is not primarily to cast aspersions on Kac’s motivations for Adsum. Rather, I want to prompt a reexamination of some of the basic questions concerning art. What can this artwork do, and who is it for? The space travel industry and the CLPS initiative exemplify an ideology in which progress for progress’s sake is always justified, but that ideology is one of many. Artworks like Adsum that reinforce popular narratives in high-profile settings have the power to naturalize these ideologies unless they are properly examined. Through such a naturalization, Adsum compels its audience to subscribe to its ideology in order to comprehend its significance. That kind of transformative power can surely be put to a better use in the service of the present people of Earth in all their variation, rather than for the benefit of an imaginary, homogenized, spacefaring humanity inhabiting one of many possible futures. 

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Huma Bhabha, My Ancestor, 2023 (photo: David Zwirner)

My Ancestor features two upright nubs of cork with white chalk lines depicting the amputated legs of a hooved animal affixed to a single wooden board, giving the impression that they presumably supported a once powerful anthropomorphized figure. In its ruinous state, however, the sculpture reads as a secular relic. Showcasing its durability, My Ancestor materially carries its history into the present, using its affective rhetoric to inspire reverence and belonging. Symbolically laden, the legs signal the destruction of the hidden yet living natural world, rendering unintelligible My Ancestor’s material composition—cork, chalk, and wood—to highlight the power of images and language, which, at once, give meaning to and conceal the world.

Language, particularly the politics of naming, has positives and negatives. Naming is a form of recognition and sense-making. Negatively, it can constitute a violent act, distribute false identities accepted as natural and erase a subject’s complex history. 

My Ancestor’s material components, while signaling resource extraction and globalization, serve as instructional aids for a new way of knowing. Cork oak trees, or Quercus suber, are indigenous to the Mediterranean region. These trees produce cork valued for numerous industrial applications, most notably the familiar wine stopper. Devoid of its familiar uses, cork’s bare materiality discloses the work’s artistic nature and thingly character, properly casting My Ancestor as a disruptor of habits. Following Bill Brown’s definition, a thing is an “irresolvable enigma” that “hover[s] over the threshold between the nameable and unnameable;” it specifies “a particular subject-object relation” via the “work they perform” in behaving their subjects.² Cork is a dead protective layer that replaces the tree’s epidermis. With the factual evocation of cork as skin, My Ancestor, whose “sensuous presence” defies its supposed inanimate character, inspires us as humans to alter our relationship with the world, enrich our relational capacities, and encourage an intercorporeality with nature that stimulates empathy, responsibility, and generosity.³ If one considers the “body [a] thing among things,” a permeable “dividual” or “quasi-object” deeply “entangled” in a relational world who shares an embodied kinship with “all things and everything,” then My Ancestor presents a point of origin, an oracle with regenerative powers offering renewal.⁴ Quercus suber can produce cork for centuries after multiple harvests. Hence, the Ancestor who emerges from the wood below produces not only an image of human impact but a lesson in how one should approach things. Chalk only furthers this notion. As a writing and educational tool that is “powdery and brittle,” ironically much like language, it plays a supporting role to My Ancestor’s raw charismatic power. 

Along with Bhabha’s other living sculptures, My Ancestor presents nature as a haunting. According to religious scholar David Morgan, “haunting seems to happen where enchantment has been banned and suppressed.” Suppressed needs give rise to ghosts, defined as “nagging forms of memory” who “[object] to their mistreatment” and “refuse to let the past go away.”⁵ Monuments to Confederate generals and colonizers provide an all-too-relevant example. As ghosts who have been animated and granted a voice, their material traces evoke competing colonial memories. While a majority hear hate speech, others hear these inanimate statues enacting their freedom of expression, acknowledging their calls for protection from citizens who commit against them “willful injury.” Nature, too, objects to its mistreatment and demands protection. Its voice comes through in rising sea levels and ever-stronger hurricanes, which has only accelerated the “Rights of Nature” movement. 

Huma Bhabha, Untitled, 2023
(photo: David Zwirner)

Extending the “right to life” concept, in addition to complicating our way of seeing, are Bhabha’s enigmatic, Untitled visages, whose aggressive liminal qualities evoke discomfort and sympathy. One rarely sees a picture in its entirety. A beholder discerns different aspects by alternating between the image and the medium. In these works, canines, gorillas, and humpback whales, among other animals, form pupils and supernatural eye colors; silent cries howl through agape mouths fashioned by dog hair; and a photograph of a brick wall forming the creature’s nose deceptively appears as tree bark from a distance. Viewed as a defense mechanism, the latter’s employment of mimicry marks an attempt to gauge a beholder’s relationship as parasitic or mutualistic before revealing itself. In these portraits, Bhabha toys with the psychological phenomenon of pareidolia to lend nature an ambiguous face. With these creatures’ true nature obscured, they blur the distinctions between culture/nature and human/animal, stressing relatedness and a deeper engagement with the sensible world. 

Huma Bhabha, Untitled, 2022
(photo: David Zwirner)

The medium of collage, a historic form of cultural critique, presents further challenges. Subordinate to the overall composition, pasted photographs signal reality and emphasize the picture’s surface, allowing Bhabha’s subject matter—nature’s destruction—and the reality of climate change to directly confront believers and deniers alike with a sense of immediacy.

The mediums of Bhabha’s works are the message. She highlights the symbolic veil that confines nature’s “resources” to secondary agents unable to tell their (his)stories to return this human-centered privilege to the natural world. Her humanoid yet alien creatures aid her effort by placing us face to face with our culpability, calling attention to our indirect relations to and unconscious consumption of nature. As actors in the world, their agency provokes reflection. If one truly sees these creatures, their once menacing and monstrous demeanor can appear quite sweet, relatable, and innocent. Perhaps, blinded by our “knowingness,” we are the monsters, who, selfish and ignorant, possess a ghoulish greed in our Darwinian “struggle for existence,” thus, committing violence.  

The misinterpreting of an artwork can of course be read as another form of violence, a “roving arbitrariness” as Martin Heidegger names it.⁶ But in attempting to understand one’s environment and things’ mysterious nature, one does justice. If receptive, Bhabha’s convincing works can attune us to nature’s aliveness and direct us toward a “democracy of things,” as Peers and others have argued.⁷ 

Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. According to art critic Ben Davis, ecological disaster art no longer “shocks” or provokes action; it is one crisis of many that proves too overwhelming.⁸ The public, as well as governments, have grown tired, resorting to imposing penalties and labeling climate activists “eco-clowns” and “eco-terrorists” no matter how informative and clever their actions. One of Just Stop Oil’s latest at Stonehenge, whose generous dusting of orange corn flour transformed the iconic structure into a series of glowing embers, served to mimic the fire within activists and nature. Fittingly accompanying such passions is the widely accepted interpretation of the megaliths as “ancestors,” who, standing over crematory remains, produce an enduring image of a triumphant Nature.⁹  

While Bhabha’s works are often described as apocalyptic or antitheses of progress, revelatory appears better suited. Built from an assemblage of pasts, her works confront the limitations of language while making present an image that brings the unknown closer to us, gifting beholders a glimpse into a potential future. Let us hope they are not cast as Cassandras. Despite their alien appearance, her creatures are very much of this world; it is their message that appears foreign, strange because we begrudgingly acknowledge that they teeter on the edge of a new way of knowing. Just as anthropogenic evolution has altered animals’ environments, behaviors, and genetic compositions, so too will humans be forced to adjust to sub-optimal habitats. Huma Bhabha’s haunting project urges us to reassess our role within a larger ecosystem, to acknowledge nature’s mute scream, and to see ourselves as “living beings [among others] … not just in the world,” but as Hannah Arendt argued, “of the world.”¹⁰  

Notes:

1. Glenn Peers, Animism, Materiality, and Museums: How Do Byzantine Things Feel? (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2021), 1. ︎
2. Bill Brown, “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry 28, no. 1 (2001): 4-5, 7, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344258. ︎
3. Brown, “Thing Theory,” 5. ︎
4. Brown, 5; Peers, Animism, Materiality, and Museums, 1, 14. ︎
5. David Morgan, “Enchantment, Disenchantment, Re-Enchantment,” in Re-Enchantment ed. James Elkins and David Morgan (Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2011), 5, 9. ︎
6. Erwin Panofsky, “On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting Works of the Visual Arts” trans. Jaś Elsner and Katharina Lorenz, Critical Inquiry 38, no. 3 (2012): 477, https://doi.org/10.1086/664547. ︎
7. Peers, Animism, Materiality, and Museums, 5, 26. ︎
8. Ben Davis, “The Shocks Are Not Shocking,” Spike Art Magazine 79: The Pessimist Issue (Spring 2024): 106-109. ︎
9. Oliver J. T. Harris and Rachel J. Crellin, “Assembling new ontologies from old materials,” in Rethinking Relations and Animism: Personhood and Materiality ed. Miguel Astor-Aguilera and Graham Harvey (United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis, 2018), 62-66. ︎
10. Veronica Vasterling, “Arendt’s Post-Dualist Approach to Nature: The Plurality of Animals,” HannahArendt.Net 11 no. 1 (2022): 115, https://doi.org/10.57773/hanet.v11i1.461. ︎

Further Reading:

Nancy, Jean-Luc, and Federico Ferrari. Being Nude: The Skin of Images. Translated by Anne E. O’Byrne and Carlie Anglemire. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014.

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Referencing his mother’s passing in 1992, Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s “aim as an artist [was] to make a work that [was] so palpable and so dynamic and so incredibly felt that [his] Mom could literally walk off the surface of the canvas and back to life.”[1] The result was Untitled (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother) from 2000, which was exhibited at his high school “Senior Art Exhibition.” Now housed in a private collection, the portrait offers a rare glimpse into Quinn’s early artistic process while communicating themes of loss, longing, dignity, purpose, parenthood, rebirth, and reciprocity.

Today, Quinn’s composite portraits of friends and relatives defy traditional portrait conventions. Employing a lone exquisite corpse technique, chance encounters of distorted and realistic body parts combined with incongruous brushstrokes create subjects that border on the unfamiliar, laying bare the body as an archive of undeveloped images. The embracing of chance, intuition, and the incorporation of familial memories highlight the spontaneous nature of his work. In their own state of becoming, the portraits express Quinn’s vulnerability and participatory role, and speak closer to the process of artmaking than the finished works themselves. Their dichotomous nature—being completed works that never quite seem finished—offer a surreal experience that remains firmly grounded in reality.

This reality is no less present in his mother’s portrait. In the black space of the foreground, she stands commandingly in swagger pose, reminiscent of Grand Manner portraiture. Bathed in a white light and taking up nearly the entire frame, her protruding stomach, rigid posture, and “chin-up” mentality, add to her regal and confident demeanor. The folds of her fuchsia gown add visual weight and further cast her apart from her gloomy environment, where a depressing, blue sky looms over inward-leaning grey towers to create a sense of claustrophobia. 

Born in 1977, Quinn grew up in poverty on the South Side of Chicago in the now demolished, and presumably depicted, Robert Taylor Homes. Built with good intentions in 1962 as a waystation to foster social mobility, federal and municipal policies, soon hijacked by private interests, allowed the buildings to fall into disrepair. Social disorder followed as living standards worsened throughout the 1980s and 90s; crime, gangs, and drugs became the norm. The Home’s notoriety, “considered the worst slum area in the United States” according to the Chicago Housing Authority in 1998, would unfairly extend to its inhabitants, who were nearly all Black. Exacerbating matters, the practice of segregated development created not only a “great wall of exclusion” but a “psychological barrier,” which strengthened negative stereotypes that would plague a whole community, spawning myths that remain all too prevalent today.[2]

The Artist’s Mother is at once a denouncement of such myths and an affirmation of humanity, embodying concepts of home and community, which often fail to extend to public housing.[3] Here, Quinn rightly expresses the body as “an amalgam of numerous experiences… built from a history of joy, sadness, ups, and downs.”[4] Her grey countenance, which mimics the towers in the background, surrenders to brown hues and full pink lips. While brown serves the purpose of skin tone, it also highlights certain elements within the composition: a fragmented eye, a delineated hand, and narrow legs. Eyes, one sensitive, the other ostensibly weary, can convey one’s memories and inner emotions; as windows to the soul, they maintain the capacity to tell narratives words alone cannot. Hands can connote work, responsibility, determination, caretaking, or reference a future act of creation. The hand’s prominent singularity, a possible reference to his mother’s partial disability due to multiple strokes, performs as an accessory to motherly greatness.

From the dreary, she emerges as a complex figure whose pillar-like stature confronts historic misconceptions, which the vanishing point behind her head assists in perpetuating. Through her confrontational gaze, she assertively erases and inverses this vanishing point, a visual metaphor for single-mindedness, or more aptly, tunnel vision. In doing so, she undermines once-assured gazes; she is not what she appears. Her defiant and towering presence, which renders the picture plane abstract, commands an act of submission, a beholder’s acknowledgment of their shrunken state and similitude with the receding towers in the background.  

Quinn’s baroque sensibility and compositional framing allow for such a submission to take place. While the pyramidal composition lends his mother stability, Quinn’s foreshortening of her right foot, presenting a passage between two worlds, places this stability in question only to reaffirm it. The foot’s formal insignificance, which gives the misleading impression of a safe and comfortable bird’s eye view, demonstrates its symbolic strength by withstanding a crushing environment, and possibly, the weight of a child. No matter the picture’s placement, whether hanging on a wall or sitting on the floor, one is unable to “look down” upon this woman; the foot’s deceptiveness, at once, reveals our culpable gaze and champions her irreducible presence.[5]

Bearing a symbolic weight similar to her meager right foot, the bright blue sole of her left sandal aids in our transcending of such limiting views while referencing his mother’s deceased, yet magisterial state. In formal terms, this blue provides visual relief from a black background and corresponds with the sky above, adding a lightness to her imposing stature. The connection evokes the Christian belief of death as gain and a new life in the beyond. Between feet, a delicate balance is struck, contributing to her dichotomous nature. While one appears to hover, the other is firmly grounded; their joining marks her eternal and palpable presence—two feet, two realms. In her fragmented state, she stands as a celestial being whose given corporeal presence extends from the felt absence of Quinn’s living memory. The balancing of these juxtapositions suggests not only a determined mother ceding to succumb to a “desperate” atmosphere, but a watchful, awe-inspiring maternal icon whose transcending of such settings bestows upon beholders gifts of resilience and comfort.

These gifts, conveyed through a calming smoothness that overtakes the harsh geometrics of her setting and fragmented make-up, also aid in capturing the conflicting nature of parenthood. The rigidity and stiffness of her posture, meant to convey a sense of fear, awe, and respect, are accompanied by soft outlines, bouncing strands of hair, pillowy draped folds, and a weightless flowing gown. These contrasts, which add a sense of playfulness to an otherwise unfriendly set of circumstances, are the convincing measures of a parent’s undeniable love, and a child’s acknowledgment of their parent’s role as disciplinarian, guide, and protector.

Seemingly a memorial portrait of his late mother, in superseding her referent, the painting communicates much more than an act of remembrance. The essence of the work, of his mother, hides in plain sight by way of the painted stroke. As gestures of intimacy and longing, they are the literal transformation of life into matter. Here, in this mood-inherent medium, his mother is both immanent and transcendent, and challenges further dichotomies of subject/object, active/passive, and animate/inanimate to lend her an irrefutable existence with equal participatory powers. The depicted hereafter paradoxically presents the here and now.

“At Wabash,” Quinn “learned… to be a human being… to transcend social conditioning… to be free,” an awakening he extends to his mother.[6] Expanding upon this notion, commonly said is that having children is akin to having your heart outside your body. This feeling is mutual for Quinn, hence the adoption of his mother’s name, which he signs on the back of every canvas as co-creator, accompanied by three hearts. In this sense, the picture presents a contradiction, who has given birth to whom? Regardless of her pregnant status, or if her belly perhaps houses an unborn Quinn, there is, nonetheless, an acknowledgment that he would not be where he is today if not for his mother’s sacrifices. As a bodily extension of Quinn’s memory, the portrait communicates a reciprocal act of creation in painterly form, a gracious and resurrectionary gesture of a beloved lost soul, and for Quinn, the beginning of a new life filled with passionate pursuits.

[1] Richard Paige, “When Sunday Comes,” Wabash Magazine (Winter 2017): 28.  https://issuu.com/wabash_college/docs/wm_winter_2017

[2] Nicholas Degan Bloom, Fritz Umbach, and Lawrence J. Vale. Public Housing Myths: Perception, Reality, and Social Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 34, 50.

[3] Quinn’s mother “was literally around the building, helping people, feeding gangbangers and the drug users when they didn’t have anything to eat, letting guys help her with the groceries and paying them to help out.” “Mary: The Making of Nathaniel Mary Quinn.” Hindman Auctions, September 28, 2022. https://hindmanauctions.com/items/10615750-untitled-portrait-of-the-artist-s-mother#_edn1.; Bloom, Umbach, and Vale. Public Housing Myths, 57-59; Audrey Petty, High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing (San Francisco, CA: McSweeney’s, 2013), 17-18.

[4] Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Wabash Magazine (Winter 2017): 2.

[5] This analogy extends from my own experience with his mother while working as an intern at Hindman Auctions in Chicago and witnessing both the work’s installation and de-installation. Several times a day I walked past her hanging in the gallery. Each time, her silent gestures made subtle commands upon my body, a radiating stillness that beckoned me as if wishing to disclose a secret. Not once did I refuse to acknowledge her, whether through a quick glance or, when time permitted, through a more formal conversation, where, seemingly of my own volition, I walked respectably as I would toward any elder past the other pictures in the gallery—the massive Paul Jenkins on view never stood a chance. When standing before her, I felt inferior, but never unwanted. Each encounter was a boost in self-esteem. I looked forward to our conversations and contemplated them afterward. This would all last until her departure, where I witnessed her on the floor propped against the wall surrounded by shipping supplies. When I approached her saddened to say goodbye, even though I stood above her, my smallness remained intact. Her awesome presence denied her objecthood and demanded my humility, which I felt obliged in part for what she had given me. My sadness came in knowing that she had more to say and that I would never see her again in the flesh.

[6] Paige, “When Sunday Comes,” 28.

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Tracey Emin, Like A Cloud of Blood, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 59 7/8 x 71 5/8 in. (152 x 182cm)

The difficulty in comprehending Tracey Emin’s Like A Cloud of Blood (2022) is the paradox of witnessing a disappearing figure coming into being. In Emin’s painting, an incomplete and empty body lies isolated in curled tension, presenting an image of discomfort, pain, and human frailty. Yet beauty is still present. Leaving aside beauty’s bifurcation into the sublime and the beautiful, its historically malicious tactics,[1] and its reduced role to something nostalgic and irrelevant, what interests me is beauty’s moral dimension, in particular, its capacity to “intensif[y] the pressure we feel to repair existing injuries.”[2] With beauty as a starting point, my aim in sharing this picture is not to arrive at a singular meaning, but rather offer a formal investigation that highlights the beholder’s essential role in the viewing process in an attempt to understand, as scholar W.J.T. Mitchell wishes us to contemplate, what pictures want.

Tracey Emin is a multi-media, conceptual artist loosely affiliated with the Young British Artists (YBAs), a group that rose to prominence in the 1990s for their sensationalist art and entrepreneurial spirit. Throughout her oeuvre, Emin has expressed “how it feels to be a woman” through motifs of bodily absence and alienation.^[3] These themes can be seen in indexical artworks such as Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (1995), My Bed (1998), and Death Mask (2002), among others.

The diaristic and the confessional, in which Emin’s work is so often read, is a response to her fraught upbringing. Her father, having a second family, abandoned Emin when she was young, leaving her family in poverty. She was raped at the age of thirteen and guiltily underwent two abortions in the early 1990’s, all which contribute to the unsettling quality her works tend to evoke. Like a Cloud of Blood is no exception; it was one of her first paintings after recovering from bladder cancer.

While all artworks mentioned can imply the absent body of Emin, a re-embodiment need not belong exclusively to the creator. Confronting solely the artwork, such an absence would invite the beholder to perform an “unselfing,” signaling a search beyond the singular and autobiographical for real and/or imagined others. As a characteristic of being in beauty’s presence, one’s selfish concerns vanish and direct themselves outward toward the concerns of others.

Elaine Scarry, in her book, On Beauty and Being Just, describes beauty as something sacred and unprecedented, an unexpected greeting that turns one to stone in its presence. In our reverence or in our staring, whether prolonged or for mere seconds, the sheer conviction of beauty causes a search for truth and opens one up to the world, people, and things. Enthralled by beauty, with its life-affirming and life-giving qualities, it makes one vulnerable and curious, inciting a desire to create or replicate, hence Scarry’s position of beauty as the basis for education.

She also acknowledges that beauty resides in the particulars, in this instance, lines and their formal relations. Building upon this notion, a line, or mark, is a present absence. It traces a moment in time, a past event that is no longer. This event is the all-too-ephemeral present structured and informed by our emotions. The individual mark, like time, constitutes such emotions. As latent forms of expression they require a close reading, or preferably, a greater visual attentiveness, a request quite at odds with the diminished attention spans yielded by the digital age.

In the painting, Emin’s lines are unsettling and convey a range of conflicting emotions. They appear rushed, scratchy, agitated, and frantic, fading when the ink runs out. Most are deliberate and aggressive, applied with a confident force, others affectionate, hesitant, and slow. Each individual mark, short or long, thick or thin, faint or distinct, implies a form of release, and along its journey can possess a different tone, personality, pulse, or intensity. The soft swell of the figure’s lower back along with the gentle curvature of its left knee compete against quick strokes of agitation, giving the impression that these caressing lines of self-care are meant to calm moments of pent-up frustration and/or uncertainty. Furthering this tension, forceful smears of deep magenta double at the top of the figure’s head and between its legs, forging a distressing mind/body connection. Comforting this upsetting scene are broader supportive swaths of muted pinks and white that sit below and cushion the contours of the figure, the very fibers of its being.

Yet not all marks can be attributed to the human hand. Seemingly taking on a will of their own, bloody streams of pink angst permeate the figure’s body and seep through the canvas, the figure’s perceived world, for pain slows time and invites loneliness. Solely belonging to one’s self, pain closes one off from the world. That said, the alienating nature of pain also unites people by virtue of all having experienced its effects.

Beauty’s long held correlation to truth affirms this figure’s fragility and pain. The exigencies of line, their perseverance and visceral tensions not only prompt but demand an engagement with the image and the environment that produced it—our world. In addition to conveying memories, consciously or not, the lines of this embodied image carry the artist’s silent and palpable presence. While the urge exists to ascribe Emin’s traumatic biography to the figure, an image extends beyond personal experience. It takes form from a wealth of collective imagery both real and fictive which an individual internalizes, recalls, and imaginatively transforms into an image of their own.[4] Regardless of whether this body belongs to Emin, there appears a tempering of the artist’s raw mental state on display, a coming to terms with the ghostly body before her, wishing for it not to disappear. Through the use of line, Emin builds up this body through traces of its painful past while simultaneously recognizing its need for care and compassion.

The figure’s vulnerability is further manifested by the gaps in the contours of its body, which the beholder fills in to repair the body to completeness. Although these interruptive gaps hint toward the figure’s disappearance and its slow decay into the affliction it suffers from, they also aid in the contour lines becoming ever more acute and in need of suturing. Becoming involved in the figure’s making, our eyes offer a form of nourishment. Sealing the body, clothing it in flesh, we animate the figure, lifting and removing it from the ground it was confined to. In our looking, wanting to empathize and care for this figure, we open ourselves up to the image, which, in turn, opens itself up to us and reciprocates a nourishing gaze. In this sense, the beholder gives life to the image, and the image affirms life for the beholder. With this reciprocal act, in our shared state of vulnerability, it allows us to reach a place of understanding wherein the figure’s world and our world become one; its burden is our burden.

Furthering this notion, the figure’s fleeting hand reveals a desperate impulse expressing a need, a want, or a desire. The chaotic manner in which these faint hurried lines are displayed—literally wearing themselves out—denotes multiple attempts to no avail. In addition to signaling a loss, the desperate gesture refers to its own vanishing. As if on its last breath, these fading lines are given a greater intensity, a felt sense of urgency. The figure’s frantic search leads one to hypothesize the what: a form of relief? a recovered self? bodily autonomy? longing? acknowledgement? a human’s touch? The beholder, however, via sight, has already provided a response to the figure’s plea, thus ending its search. Our restorative gaze acts as a metaphorical helping hand. Our vision is a haptic vision, a liberating recognition that attempts to pull this figure into existence, to rescue it from its lone state. It is a visual act that wishes for the figure, in a sense, to get out of its own head.

Beauty, Scarry asserts, demands a sense of “moral urgency” that comes with an urge to preserve and protect. The sketch-like quality of the image, its flattened perspective, the figure’s instability and human scale, and the visual weight of the medium atop the figure that ungraciously assists it further toward the bottom of the frame into nothingness and despair, adds to this sense of immediacy.Effectively weakening the power of the beholder, the image compels one to offer a more secure and nurturing environment, to reverse its downcast horizon. One must remember that a work of art is the objectification of human experiences; hence, we not only preserve and protect the artwork for its beauty, but its ability to express the beauty of being human and feeling alive, which extends to human rights and equitable justice. Scarry explains this urge as the “particular” manifesting itself into the “distributional,” that is—after succumbing to and identifying beauty—the need to share and convince another of the beauty they see in an effort to adjust another’s perceptual error (e.g., this essay). If such distribution is successful—meaning a population’s agreement on what is beautiful—actions, such as implementing new laws, would be upheld, and shouldered by a community, thus leading to a more just society.[5]

Having fortified a sense of solidarity with the figure, meeting it on equal terms, Emin’s work can be said to redirect claims of individualism toward helping our fellow man. Her work unabashedly embraces the less admired fundamental conditions of being human: vulnerability and dependency. Moreover, her telling of women’s stories through art—taking into account her own—can extend to a woman’s plight, the violence perpetrated against them, and reproductive rights, all of which the literal and metaphorical pressures of magenta come into play. Making explicit reference to female sexual anatomy and perhaps its inner bodily functions, these pressures direct attention to the mental and physical afflictions that plague these two sites. With this in mind, the previously mentioned streams of pink angst, which bleed down the canvas in unison, could be said to perform the dual role of signifying “period positivity” while acknowledging women’s slow and mentally draining fight for equality. But more to the point, and as Emin reminds us, “we all bleed.”[6]

Ultimately, what Emin’s work achieves—which all art should strive for—is that it provokes questions. Or put another way, demands answers. Art and our encounter with it presents a negotiation. Its aim is not to provide solutions, but to bring one closer to truth. Its ambiguous nature offers shared experiences and sustenance. While we all seek predictable and stable lives, it is art’s instability that we cherish, its ability to rattle our realities and awaken our cognitive faculties. To some, this is poppycock, hence the demonization of liberal arts and humanities programs in universities across the nation. But as we inch closer to climate catastrophe and a world where so-called “obscene” books cease to exist, all the while contending with an automated society run by AI, humans may soon be relieved of their critical thinking skills and agency and instead prescribed a permanent role as spiritual healers in search of new ways of knowing. So, in this not-so-fictional dystopian state, having the ability to master the art of close reading and engage in matters beyond the surface may come in handy after all, for being able to see beauty in the flatness of the everyday or take pleasure in the commonplace may be all we have left. “The question, maybe,” as cultural critic Megan O’Grady engaged with, “has never really been whether or not art can heal us but rather to what extent we have the courage to heal ourselves.”[7]

It is Emin’s visceral venture into the unknown, her artistic process akin to a healing touch, which brings a pleasure that exceeds pain and offers one the courage needed for an uncertain future. Like A Cloud of Blood, at once poignant and consoling, heavy yet tender, endeavors toward a humanist ideal of acceptance. Asserted through resistant lines of conviction, the painting’s confessional quality assists in bolstering Emin’s claim that “Honesty is beauty.”[8] Beholden to this picture’s beauty, which can paradoxically be expressed as a distracted contemplativeness, helps remove us from the everyday while simultaneously bringing it into greater focus. Our intimate encountering and animation of this supposed “dead matter,” complimented by an appreciative and empathetic viewing, enables the beholder to share in emotional time with this figure and adopt its calls for human betterment and relief for those in need.

While I have expressed that a sympathetic entering into an alternative world can birth new perspectives, growth, and understanding, the choice ultimately rests with the beholder to see this figure as a static, mute image or a living image. But in seeing the beauty of the latter, such a view can be adopted and directed toward the injustices and human sufferings found throughout our world. I, of course, acknowledge that my close reading may be viewed as speculative and subjective—although pure objectivity is just as illusory—but in my dialogue with this picture, perhaps this is what it wanted all along: to be seen, heard, and valued on account of a beholder’s inquiry, an attempt to understand its point of view and what it asks, or possibly, demands of us.

Notes

[1] Eric Michaud, “Self-Mimesis and Self-Portrait Gods,” in The Barbarian Invasions: A Genealogy of the History of Art. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019), 49-93.

[2] Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just (NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 57.

[3] Sotheby’s, “Sotheby’s Talks: Tracey Emin CBE RA and Simon Shaw on Edvard Munch’s Women,” YouTube, March 2, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MqFXvdYrJw.

[4] Hans Belting, “The Locus of Images,” in An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 37-61.

[5] Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just, 9-16, 65-67, 74-75, 80-82, 86-119.

[6] Sotheby’s, “Sotheby’s Talks: Tracey Emin CBE RA and Simon Shaw on Edvard Munch’s Women.”

[7] Megan O’Grady, “The Artists Bringing Activism into and beyond Gallery Spaces,” The New York Times, October 1, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/t-magazine/art-activism-forensic-architecture.html.

[8] Sotheby’s. “Sotheby’s Talks: Tracey Emin CBE RA and Simon Shaw on Edvard Munch’s Women.”

Further Readings

Belting, Hans. An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body. Translated by Thomas Dunlap. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Elkins, James. “Marks, Traces, ‘Traits,’ Contours, ‘Orli,’ and ‘Splendores’: Nonsemiotic Elements in Pictures.” Critical Inquiry 21, no. 4 (1995): 822–60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344069.

Mitchell, W. J. T.. “What Do Pictures Want?,” in What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 28-56.

Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Vetlesen, Arne. A Philosophy of Pain. Translated by Jon Irons. United Kingdom: Reaktion Books, 2009.

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“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”

How do you feel about epigraphs? My partner once said she hated them, at least in the context of academic writing. Why not just get straight to what you want to say? Many readers find them pretty easy to skip over (as I’m sure at least a couple of you did when approaching this blog post) and if used incorrectly they can easily become unnecessary filler, pretentious excess, or both. After all, you don’t need Plato to tell you that “the beginning is the most important part of the work,” and except for this bit I won’t really be talking about ancient Greek philosophers at all. All it really does is add a bit of pageantry to a pretty straightforward series of blog posts on writing and reading introductions.

But that pageantry does have a purpose, it does something for the reader, however slight … right? But is that the right approach? Moreover, when does it work? At this point in my dissertation process — writing and rewriting what will become the first pages of my first chapter — an obsession with how to start things has caught me in a loop of rewriting.

This is, of course, a common problem. I have also been told that knowing it is a common problem doesn’t make it any easier to overcome. In the words of one of my advisors, academic writing is one of those skills that actually gets more difficult as you have more experience with it. Or at least that’s what I tell myself when I realize it has taken me a longer time to write six pages now than it did to churn out thirty my first year in grad school, or when I scroll through the many versions of my prospectus while trying to find a particular source.

There have been plenty of blog posts discussing writing tips or offering methods for staying on task, and plenty more discussing the difficult and often isolating process of writing a dissertation (some of which are on this very site). These posts can be incredibly helpful and inspirational for the desperate graduate student looking at the long road of dissertation writing, due to the writer’s clever way of staying on task and/or their honesty about their struggles. However, seeing as I have not yet found an intuitive way of managing my time and already tend to overanalyze my writing struggles, I’d like to take a different approach. The goal of this series of posts is to make this reading material accessible and light, even for those without a lot of background in textual studies.

If my work in literary adaptation and new media have taught me anything, it would be that you can learn something from every text, no matter which medium or genre you are interested in. With that in mind, I am going to take a close look at some of my favorite opening moments in texts across print, film, and video games to see what makes them so memorable. With any luck, these deep dives will reveal something about what makes a good introduction in any genre, and just maybe help me break out of my writer’s block. If nothing else, it’ll be a great way to get back in touch with what got me into this line of work in the first place.

John Sanders is a PhD Candidate in the Syracuse University English Department where he studies film, new media, and adaptation. He is currently working on a dissertation about digital and analog games based on literary works, and hopes that no one recalls his library books.

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What is your job?

I am the Publicist for the Shakespeare Theatre Company. I work closely within my department to promote the productions for the season. I create press releases, such as announcing the cast, and guarantee that theatre critics will attend and review performances on opening night. I pitch stories to various print and online publications, morning news shows, podcasts, and other media outlets. I also coordinate with the stage management team and media outlets to schedule interviews with actors, directors, and designers, and work as an agent for the cast and creative team for publicity opportunities. I make sure events are listed on a variety of local arts and cultural events calendars, and I have been working with other departments within the company to find potential publicity opportunities.

A Publicist creates earned advertising. Unlike paid advertising, I must make the connections with print and online media outlets to get coverage through persuasive pitches and interesting angles. Likewise, most of the “communications” are generated and disseminated in-house, on Twitter, Facebook, and the website. In many theatre companies a Publicist may be in charge of marketing and/or social media, too, but in my position the communications I tend to write — press releases and press statements — are meant to be published in outside venues rather than in-house. 

I am in the Department of Marketing and Communications, which includes many subdivisions and duties — at the theatres, in the administrative offices, and in all outward-facing arenas. My department is concerned with everything including paid advertising; the social media presence of the Company; the overall design and copy of the website; the graphics and artwork of the Company; subscription, package, group, and individual ticket sales, including the box office; retail, concessions, and other sales; in-house publications; bookings and events held at the theatres; and audience services and theatre management.

What made you want to look for career off the tenure track?

Ha! That’s a long story, but the short version is: my husband was tenure-track at a large research university, and well on his way to securing tenure there. I had two previous visiting assistant professorships, and was likely about to embark on another, but I was dreading living apart again.

We decided together to leave academia at the beginning of the last academic calendar. After my first few 2018-19 academic applications went out, I just stopped. We chose a few cities where we would both want to live, to see if we could land satisfying, well-paid positions outside of academia. He had a long hiring process for his current position, and that allowed me the time to refocus my energy into creating resumes and cover letters for other types of positions, specifically in Washington, D.C. 

How did you get your job?

I applied for and interviewed (by phone) at several Washington, D.C., libraries, theater companies, and non-profit organizations. The whole process — especially for those who have applied for academic positions — is so much more quick, transparent, and (relatively) painless. I was happy after the phone interview here, and that made the decision easy.

What kind of job counseling or advice did you seek out?

I made sure to create a Linked-In account, and I think more helpful than the account itself was seeing how others in positions I would want framed their skills. I talked to any and all friends with a PhD working outside of academia, asking for materials and asking them basically the same questions as we have here. I used the resources on The Versatile PhD, Beyond the Professoriate, and other online opportunities. I joined the alumni associations at the universities that granted my PhD and MA. I was making connections and asking lots of questions, doing the homework to learn about different career options. And this may be different for other positions, of course, but I was dropping any real mentions of my research. No one needs to know what my dissertation is about in a cover letter — succinctly stating that I am an expert in Shakespearean performance is enough.

What does your average day look like? What kind of decisions you make?

I usually work 9:30am-5:30pm in an office building, with a few evening events per month. My day consists of drafting, revising, and editing press releases and other writing for the theatre. I send a lot of emails to theatre critics and writers, and I get to have coffee or lunch with these writers so we can discuss potential articles at length. When I have an interview pitch accepted, I also schedule the interview, provide transportation, and inform the actor about the details of the interview.

But there are all sorts of surreal aspects of the job. I have helped members of the Supreme Court onstage for a Mock Trial. I have attended The Atlantic Festival and shared a greenroom with some major celebrities. U.S. Senators have performed jokes I wrote while wearing crowns and capes, and, at this point, I’ve emailed more than one “Dame.”

What skills do you use in your job?

I am still a writer and researcher, but usually in a different capacity. When I am pitching stories, I begin by doing a lot of research to gather details about my topic, but also researching to consider the best outlet for a story. In some ways, it’s even more specific than trying to find the correct academic journal for an article because it’s not just where does this story belong, but also who is the person who will want to write this story.

I get to do a lot of archival work, too, such as finding and pulling previous photographs and articles, watching older productions as research or for audio clips, etc. I really enjoy digging into the theatre’s past to get a better sense of where it is now and where it is heading.

I do also write some materials, such as short essays in our theatre program and copy on the website. It’s an opportunity to take my years of study and distill it into an accessible piece of writing that may be read by up to 10,000 theatregoers during the run of a play. I’ve written mayoral proclamations, a note entered into the Congressional record, and comedy sketches performed by U.S. politicians, as well as ghostwriting for other tasks.

I really love doing that.

What, if anything, might you have done differently during your PhD career to set yourself up to transition into a career off the tenure track?

I would not have continued for the PhD. It’s that simple. Maybe I would have earned a Master’s degree in Arts Administration, Museum Studies, or Library Sciences instead or in addition to the MA in English. I have never been called into a non-academic interview where the PhD was needed, and I believe that for many jobs the PhD made me a less desirable applicant for a variety of reasons.

How do you see your job for your field more generally changing in the next 5-10 years?

The world of print media is rapidly changing, and although there are fewer venues for publication (my colleagues in advertising, too, are affected by this and where to run their adverts), there are always ways to get people talking about theatre and arts. I may just have to get creative!

What advice would you give someone considering entering your field?

I don’t know if I would be interested in all public relations positions, but I am happy working to be doing publicity promoting the arts, humanities, and other non-profit organizations with a mission I believe in.

So, if anyone were interested in those sorts of position, it’s easy to find some of the outlets now as a current or recent graduate student:

• become a writer or editor for various publications (I did a lot of theatre, book, and music reviews and interviews in my grad-school hustle, and still do an occasional concert review on the side)
• volunteer for a local arts organization as a publicist: help drum up some excitement for new works and events
• do informational interviews about the position (you can contact me, for example)
• study up on the technical aspects of the job (my learning curve included learning the templates for specific writing assignments publicists do, but a good MOOC or some online videos and articles will help with that)

What do you most like about your job?

There are many things I truly enjoy about the job: free tickets for plays (and often at other local theatres, too), knowing that my writing will connect with theatregoers, reading an article that I helped facilitate come out, having weeknights and weekends free to spend with my husband (which wasn’t true when we were both academics), and more.

But, as a very recent example, I spent a long, leisurely lunch with a highly respected theatre critic, and we just chatted about theatre generally. And somehow, I got paid to just have a really great conversation with someone else who is so passionate and experienced in theatre. What could be better than that? 

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What is your job?

I am Assistant Teaching Professor and English Studies Coordinator. This is basically a hybrid of administration and teaching. I report to the English department chair, but I am also going to be working closely with the new faculty Director of Undergraduate Studies.

What made you want to look for a career off the tenure track?

I applied to tenure stream jobs, too. I cast a wide net.

How did you get your job?

I believe that the clincher was a good job letter and my previous experience working in administrative positions outside academia. It’s a bit ironic that that’s the case, but inter-office skills are often something academics sometimes don’t learn before they are on the market.

What kind of job counseling or advice did you seek out?

I had the opportunity to do mock interviews with colleagues at University of Pittsburgh, and these were infinitely valuable. A good practice run generally involves saying all the wrong things and knowing immediately, as you are saying them, how to fix your answers.  

What does your average day look like? What kind of decisions do you make?

I ride my bike straight uphill to campus, then I check in with the undergraduate coordinator and the administrative specialist. I answer emails, send emails out, check my day planner, make my task list (for instance, today my main agenda is typing up meeting minutes for the Undergraduate Committee meeting last week), and then do whatever class prep I may still need to do, and teach. I also am the go-to for the department’s PR intern, so I make sure she gets what she needs for promoting events, and I check that what I’ve sent her has been posted. I ride home for lunch to walk my dog, too. I don’t have to pedal on the ride home!

I enjoy having the routine of coming in to co-workers who I have to talk to and collaborate with. But I also love teaching, and there are a number of bright students in my classes that have a lot of smart things to say.

What skills do you use in your job?

I teach, so I use the critical reading and writing skills I acquired in higher education. I also use my technical skills — programs and applications that are fundamental to office management, such as Excel (I don’t love it, but I can use it). But the main thing is soft skills — communication in particular. I have a lot of questions, and I have to ask confidently, and also listen to or read answers carefully, so I don’t have to ask again or misunderstand. This sounds so obvious, but it can be difficult when a lot is going on.

What, if anything, might you have done differently during your PhD career to set yourself up to transition into a career off the tenure track?

This is a weird question, because really, the tenure track is usually the goal when you go into a PhD program. Non-tenure jobs can be very exploitative and low-paying. This job, though, is much better paying than the equivalent at most other universities, and it has room for promotion. It also makes a space for someone like me who is a dedicated teacher, but may be a little slower to publish than what is expected for tenure today.

What advice would you give to someone considering a career off the tenure track?

Be open to careers outside the tenure track, work on your job materials and begin professionalizing early, attend job market preparation events, and don’t focus on publication alone.

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What is your job?

I am the Assistant Director of the Center for Fellowship & Scholarship Advising at Syracuse University. I work under our director, Jolynn Parker, to advise students regarding nationally competitive fellowships and scholarships such as Fulbright, Rhodes, Marshall, Mitchell, Gilman, Truman, and more.

What made you want to look for a career off the tenure track?

At first, it was a lack of tenure track job opportunities in the geographic location in which I wished to live. As I continued to reflect on my personal and career goals, I was increasingly finding that the tenure track didn’t provide the kind of work/life balance that I desired. You can read more about my process in my previous Pub post, “We’re All Smart Enough: A Pep Talk for PhDs on the Job Market.”

How did you get your job?

I initially heard about the opportunity through my advisor, who is friends with the director of my new department. I then submitted an application through the university’s centralized hiring process, and completed two rounds of interviews: one informal, and the other in-person.

What kind of job counseling or advice did you seek out?

All kinds! I worked with my advisor to discuss possible non-tenure track opportunities. I attended career workshops organized by my university’s graduate career services and my department. I attended conference panels and workshops about career development. I followed blogs like Karen Kelsky’s The Professor Is In. And I generally kept in touch with colleagues who had received their degrees but found employment off the tenure track.

What does your average day look like? What kinds of decisions do you make?

On an average day I am at my desk by 8:30am, answering emails and checking out my to-do list. I read drafts of student application materials, and offer feedback on the fitness of its content for the particular application, as well as things like grammar and punctuation. Scholarship application materials (especially personal statements) are their own genre, and so I help students get acquainted with what that genre requires. Then I might meet with students to discuss either fellowship opportunities for which they might be eligible, or their current applications for particular fellowships.

I work on publicizing workshops and information sessions hosted by our office. I might also be managing a writing workshop where students conduct peer-review to help each other revise their application essays. I coordinate with other campus offices and departments to organize events. If needed, I update our website. I post to our department Instagram. At some point, I eat lunch (usually at my desk) but I also often take an afternoon walk with a coworker. And then I’m out the door at 5:00pm!

We are currently busier than normal due to the many fellowship and scholarship deadlines in September and October, so I have been completing about one hour of work at home in the evenings. But it’s temporary.

What skills do you use in your job?

I use my writing, editing, and teaching skills daily, as well as my skills in multitasking and managing projects over a long period. I also make great use out of my event planning skills. My experience with WordPress also came in handy, as that is the platform that houses our department’s website. The skills I had to pick up were largely content-based. I needed to (and continue to) familiarize myself with the scholarships and fellowships that our office advertises to students. I also needed to reframe my pedagogical strategies for the product-based nature of our work.

What, if anything, might you have done differently during your PhD career to set yourself up to transition into a career off the tenure track?

I would have been more honest with myself early on about what I did or did not like about the work I was doing in graduate school, and seriously considered alternative careers. I also would have conducted informational interviews with individuals who had the types of jobs I wanted off the tenure-track to get a better sense of how I could build my resume for those careers.

How do you see your job or your field more generally changing in the future?

I am in a growing profession (something new after being on the English tenure-track job market!). Fellowship and scholarship offices will continue to grow as more universities realize the value of our service, as well as decrease the number of tenure-track faculty — the people who used to informally do the kind of work that fellowship offices now provide. Since that problem isn’t going away, I actually look forward to the creation of more offices like ours at Syracuse University, especially at institutions with underserved student populations.

What advice would you give someone considering a career off the tenure track?

Informational interviews! If you want to continue working in a university setting, look for the types of jobs offered at your university or the kinds of universities you want to work at. Then, reach out to the people who hold jobs you’d be interested in.

The post On Track for Success: PhDs Working Off the Tenure Track (Week 2) appeared first on Broadly Textual Pub.

This month, we’re interviewing people with humanities PhDs who once found themselves in this very position, asking similar questions regarding their future. All are now working full-time off the tenure track. Their answers to how do I get a job? are as diverse as the career options available to PhD students. But one of the most important strategies to finding out how to get a job you want is to interview people who are already working in the field.

To start, we interviewed Dan Moseson, an alumni of the Religion PhD program at Syracuse University, where in 2018 he defended his dissertation on how the concept of “religion” functions in the field of contemplative studies, a close cousin of the mindfulness movement. Now, he holds the position of Graduate Career Coach in the Career and Professional Development Center at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City.

What is your job?

My main responsibilities are providing one-on-one career guidance to graduate students, presenting to classes and other gatherings, and designing campus programs to further graduate students’ degree completion and entry into the career of their choice. I’m assigned to the Colleges of Humanities, Fine Arts, and Architecture and Planning, and also serve two graduate programs in the College of Education. Our office serves most of the university, with the exception of a few colleges, so we have a large number of career coaches with different specialties, some of whom are also in Assistant Director roles over coaching, programming, and marketing.

What made you want to look for a career off the tenure track?

Partially the job market, partially the realization that my best and most gratifying work was in creating programming for graduate students, some of it focused on career development. Another important factor is what happens when a city boy like me is left to set his own schedule for nine years outside a major metro area. I got very into hiking, outdoor photography, and generally moving and doing things outside while I lived in Syracuse, and had great opportunities to be involved in radio broadcasting and political advocacy as well.

I think I just have too many interests to devote my life to research 24/7. On a recent Saturday, I helped reroute part of a hiking trail way up in the Rockies above Salt Lake City, and it was just the best. I’m hoping I can continue to conduct and present research, though I don’t yet have a concrete plan for striking that balance. 

How did you get your job?

By applying on the internet, cold, which is the wrong way. The way to get a job is networking and informational interviewing, which I didn’t do very much of. I do not think I would have gotten my current job without the experience I gained creating programs and serving in student government at Syracuse University, and the concrete accomplishments I was able to point to on both of those fronts. Especially for humanists, if you want a career outside the classroom after graduation, you have to be involved outside the classroom before graduation.

For example, I assume most folks reading this have been passionate about social justice since roughly the moment of their conception, and a city like Syracuse has plenty of need for people willing to get their hands dirty and change some things. If you hang around long enough, you’ll also gain a variety of useful experiences in communication and organization, which act as evidence of what your skills in speaking, writing, project planning, and critical thinking can accomplish on the ground. Plus, you’ll likely enrich your own scholarship and actually help some people, too.

For folks at Syracuse University, I would look for opportunities to get involved through the Office of Engagement Programs at Hendricks Chapel, the Syracuse Center for Peace and Social Justice, and whatever else you know about. I hear there’s an election of some importance coming up, as well. All these experiences count, if you know how to talk about them. Your university’s own career development center can show you how.  

What kind of job advice did you seek out?

I worked extensively with Dan Olson-Bang, Director of Professional and Career Development in the Graduate School at Syracuse University. I consulted with him on every aspect of career exploration and the job search. In the process, I learned many of the skills I now teach to graduate students at the University of Utah. I was also lucky enough to have a very transparent, collaborative relationship with my dissertation advisor, who was very supportive of my using my PhD training to build a career that works for me. 

What does your average day look like? What kind of decisions do you make?

There isn’t an average day. Sometimes I’m meeting with students and planning grad events. And sometimes I’m taking photos for undergrads’ LinkedIn pages, slinging snow-cones like nobody’s business, or trying to get four cornhole boards and assorted other lawn paraphernalia to stay in the back of a moving golf cart. That’s another way of saying my job offers opportunities to be involved in a lot of different endeavors, from professional development retreats to career fairs, networking events, and community partnerships.

I’ve had a lot of autonomy (after some basic training) in how I approach my meetings with students, set my appointment hours, and design programs for groups of students.  I review most of what I do with my supervisor, but in that process, my ideas usually get refined, rather than vetoed. 

What skills do you use in your job?

I think the graduate students and the faculty in my program taught me how to be a good collaborator and mentor. I need those skills to get students to trust me enough to listen to what I have to say. The PhD-specific skill I use most is close, critical reading, and attention to how a piece of writing is working at different scales of focus. Sometimes I’m making small tweaks to a resume or cover letter, and sometimes I’m reworking the whole document in a short timeframe, hopefully in a collaborative process with a student. It’s delightful. 

It also probably also helps (as Chris M. Golde of Stanford’s graduate career center argues) that I have some idea how universities work and empathy for how grad students and faculty experience things.  Maybe there’s an attitude there, too. My grad program encouraged creative, interdisciplinary thinking and gave me the space to try it, in research and in student programming. I think some of that has carried over to this role where, fortunately, I also have a lot of autonomy to try new kinds of programming for graduate students. So, there is a kind of experimental attitude I work from. I’ve always been that way, but my graduate program definitely encouraged it. 

What, if anything, might you have done differently during your PhD career to set yourself up to transition into a career off the tenure track?

I would have done more informational interviews. This is the first thing I encourage in nearly every student meeting and presentation I conduct. You can get a solid primer from Harvard Business Review, a little more nuance in the New York Times, and some strategies and common pitfalls from Inside Higher Ed’s Carpe Careers blog.

How do you see your job and field changing in the future?

My guess is that it will expand. A byproduct of the demand for concrete career outcomes is a focus on professional development and internships. (Employers generally value hands-on experience above education, despite the baseline necessity for a bachelor’s to gain access to any halfway desirable job.) I think this is especially true for graduate education, which doesn’t appear to be slowing down, at least anecdotally, despite the ever-increasing uncertainty of the career outcomes. Of course, if the economy really tanks or Congress follows through on taxing tuition credits, all bets are off.  

What advice would you give someone considering a career off the tenure track?

To quote from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’ “poppy” but excellent career development book Designing Your Life: “try stuff.” You’re almost certainly getting to try teaching — do you like it? Probably. Can you make a career doing it at the university level? Hard to say. You may want to explore other possibilities for doing the things you like doing in graduate school — through informational interviews, job shadowing, internships, volunteering, or even part-time work. My colleague Rob Pearson at UT Dallas has a great article about that.  I also recommend reading Inside Higher Ed’s “Carpe Careers” blog on the regular. It’s written by members of the Graduate Career Consortium, the professional organization for people who do what I do, and it’s filled with excellent practical advice for building the career you want.

What do you like most about your job?

The one-on-one conversations with students are just great.  I’ve always loved working collaboratively to improve communication, especially written communication.  It’s funny — here I am, the person I considered least likely to be working with grad students at an R1, doing just that in a staff position. An ironic and excellent turn of events. Also, I have some really superb colleagues in the Career and Professional Development Center and across The U. They’re as smart and collaborative and unassuming as the folks I went to grad school with. When I got here, there was also an immediate effort to help me feel included, socially as well as professionally.

In general, don’t underestimate the admin side of the university. I get to watch the leadership in my office tackle dauntingly complex problems of communication and organization, like managing huge career fairs and leading a highly competent, critical, and independent staff of higher ed professionals.  See if you can arrange an internship, volunteer gig, or just a few days of shadowing with someone in a director or assistant director role in a campus office, and hold onto your socks. 

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