Apologies for this late blog post! Zoe, thank you for putting together these fantastic readings for your workshop. I was firstly struck by the somatic in all of these readings, from Patricia Williams’ search “for the shape of force and lost hands,” in Chapter 1 of Avery Gordan (6), to bodies gazing at reproduced images of other bodies in Eng (86). The surface of a body can present and disclose secrets but also haunt us with fragile, unknown pasts. 

I was particularly struck, on a personal note, by Ahmed’s description of his grandmother’s hands, and their rings, as a kind of archive of memories (9).  I loved this quote: “The body was the first archive I learned to read” (9). I used to ask my Grandfather about his ring all the time when I was little, before he passed away. He grew up on the island of Malta, and the ring was imprinted with the Maltese crest. It was passed down through the generations – a physical piece of history that tied him to his childhood home when he moved to London at 17. Asking about the ring invariably led to countless stories about various uncles, aunts and second cousins in Malta, and a window into this lives that were somehow connected to my own. (Or a story about the time he accidentally fused the ring to his hand when attempting to do some electrical work. For a brief, painful few hours, the ring was literally fused to his finger!) Reading his body, was also reading my family history, a past, distant “world that would never be mine” that simultaneously came to life in his re-telling (9). This makes me reflect on how reading the body, as an archive, impacts our sense of time. How does reading the body both collapse and reinforce temporality? Our space between things? Secrets? Ghosts? Other bodies? 

I was also struck by the quotation from Ahmed which Stefanie highlights: ”This archive made me silent for ethical reasons – it did not belong to me. I had no right to tell their secrets, as they were not my secrets. The scar was not on my body.” This makes me think of some of the reading I’ve been doing for my Feminism and Globalization class with Sonali Perera. We’ve been talking a lot about who gets to tell a story, and how. I’m struck by how Saidya Hartman imaginatively gives voice to where the archive gapes in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, while remaining very aware of her own positionality throughout the work. In terms of your question on the ethical obligation we have in work that approaches ghostliness, spectrality and silence, perhaps this is a good model of how to do this kind of work thoughtfully and responsibly. 

Looking forward to discussing more shortly! 

Hello all! Outlining my workshop for next Monday. The summaries and readings can be found here. If you could respond with a blog post, that would be great. A brief overview below: 

Required Readings: 

• Two short chapters from How to Build a Life in the Humanities, “Imposter Phenomenon” and “Academic Guilt”
• “Self-Care as Professionalization: A Case for Ethical Doctoral Education in Composition Studies”
• “Undergraduate and Graduate Students’ Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic” 

Supplementary readings (pick and choose as your time allows): 

• “Time Management and Timelessness” in The Slow Professor 
• “Time Out” from the Supervalent Thought blog by Lauren Berlant 
• “Blissful Blundering: Embracing Deficiency and Surviving Graduate School” 
• CUNY Mental Health Resources

Here are some questions I’m thinking about:

1. Given the pressures of graduate school, academia, and the structure of the academy, not to mention today’s precarious political and economic climate, how do we maintain healthy lives as graduate students?
2. How do we address the negative tendencies or harmful thought patterns we see in ourselves? How do we establish good boundaries and cultivate healthy practices?
3. How do we work to support one another, mindful that some are at greater risk of developing mental health disorders than others? 
4. How has COVID impacted mental health and mental health resources in the CUNY community? 
5. How do we take this conscientiousness into the classroom as current or future teachers?

Mental health touches us all personally and differently, and I want to make sure people have space to share as much or as little as they like on this topic. Please feel free to share and reflect on your own experiences on the blog or in class, or not. Any questions/concerns, please let me know. My email is [email protected]. 

Thank you all! Looking forward to discussing.

I felt quite refreshed reading Helen Sword’s Air and Light and Time. Chapter 3, Rhythms and Rituals, particularly spoke to me. I appreciate that Sword begins her chapter doing away with “should” and instead focusing on “may” in reference to finding our own writing rhythms and rituals. “Should” is heavy; solid; connotative with guilt. “May” is a possibility, permission, the month of spring! I particularly liked her quotation expressing this sentiment on page 53: 

“Like marching and dancing, routines and rituals share some common features. Both are intentional activities rather than passive states; both can be either communal or solitary; both involve not just repetition but change. (Marching takes you to new places; dancing transforms the places where you are.) The point of this chapter is not that “anything goes” but that, within the spacious parameters of a successful writing practice, nearly anything is possible: marching, dancing, swaying, skipping, or even standing still to feel the wind blow past. Whether you prefer polar oppositions or sliding scales, rules or ambiguity, both/and and/or either/or, there is no “right” way of writing. The best way to write is any way that works for you.” (53)

We may find our own writing rhythms and rituals, and there is freedom, individuality, promise and potential in that. Refreshing to hear since it often seems like authors attempt to prescribe a one size-fits-all solution, which can then engender feelings of guilt or confusion when it doesn’t work…we are all so varied as writers, it makes sense that rhythms and rituals will naturally and substantially differ from one person to another.

I also liked this passage, because it made me think about writing in terms of movement and performance. I am a dancer but I’ve never thought about the connections between how I write and how I dance before. I usually approach choreography with a detailed plan, much like I like to have a “map” before I start writing. I am also a “fiddle as I go” writer, much like I’m a “stop and let’s change it now before we forget” choreographer. But my rehearsals, much like my writing routines and rituals, are spaces of repetition and invention. Practicing a particular piece is also creating the piece, much like writing is a process of discovery. And honestly the best rehearsals are the ones where I release some of my control to let in creativity and ambiguity, much like writing as well. On this note, I really liked Alessandra’s comment in her blog on how she approaches writing, given her work as a playwright and actor. I’m curious to learn how other people’s work and interests inflect, compare, or contrast from the way they write? 

Thinking about “rituals” also made me reflect on the discussion of spatialized rituals in Chapter Two. Sword quotes the cognitive psychologist Ronald T. Kellogg, who explains that spatialized rituals “‘can amplify performance by inducing ‘intense concentration or a favorable motivational or emotional state,’ triggering ‘retrieval of ideas, facts, plans, and other relevant knowledge associated with the place, time, or frame of mind selected by the writer for work’” (34). I really related to this.  A particular seat in the library (or my one chair at home now…), a piece of music, a cup of coffee, sunlight — all work to get me in my writing flow much quicker. Sometimes it can take me hours to just get going, but these markers usually give me a push in the right direction. Or they allow me to more easily “fake it until I make it”– feign that I’m in the zone, until I actually am. 

Thinking about these routines and rituals encouraged me to take the BASE quiz. I tried it manually at first, but the digital version Joseph recommended definitely gave more in-depth results…

I know I tend to write in isolation, and usually share my work with only a few people, and the quiz reflected this. I think part of that comes down to who is actually interested in reading it or has the time to do so, but the other part comes down to my need to “perfect” until the last moment. I know I need to relinquish the flawed idea of a finished/perfect draft. Sending something I’m not completely happy with is ok (definitely admired this mindset in your post, Stefanie.) The quiz suggested I widen my social horizons to establish a more productive daily routine and I think having someone to regularly read my work and keep me accountable, would definitely encourage me to write and share more. How have others approached or developed the social/communal nature of their writing? 

Looking forward to discussing today.

Workshop Readings (links provided/material forthcoming on the drive): 

• Two chapters from How to Build a Life in the Humanities: “Imposter Phenomenon” by Natalie M. Houston and “Academic Guilt” by Giuseppina Iacono Lobo 

• “Self-Care as Professionalization: A Case for Ethical Doctoral Education in Composition Studies” by Dana Lynn Durscoll, S. Rebecca Leigh and Nadia Francine Zamin 

• “Undergraduate and Graduate Students’ Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” by Igor Chirikov, Krista M Soria, Bonnie Horgos and Daniel Jones-White 

Supplementary readings (if your time allows): 

• “Time Management and Timelessness” in The Slow Professor by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber
• “Time Out” from the Supervalent Thought blog by Lauren Berlant 
• “Blissful Blundering: Embracing Deficiency and Surviving Graduate School” by Emily Pabst 
• CUNY Mental Health Resources

            I have decided to frame my workshop session around two areas of focus; how do we choose what we really want to study, and then how do we sustain that study in a healthy way? To begin, I would love to spend some time discussing how we refine our interests and articulate our passions. I imagine this will be more helpful to some than others, but at least for me, I’m coming into the program with varying interests and wonder how to “land on” my speciality. I haven’t found a particular reading for this, but we will do an activity Carrie mentioned earlier in class, where we take time to list our favorite scholarly reads. My hope is that by building this personal list, we can thoughtfully notice useful patterns within our own preferences. 

            Thinking about discovering and articulating academic interests has also made me reflect on how we can sustain these passions throughout graduate school. For the rest of my workshop session, I would love to discuss issues of work/life balance and mental health. I was struck by Moten and Harney’s discussion of the “naturalization of misery” in academia; “the belief that intellectual work requires alienation and immobility and that the ensuing pain and nausea is a kind of badge of honor…” (Moten and Harney 117). Graduate school is challenging. There is no doubt it requires dedication, hard work and perseverance. But I am opposed to the false claim that academic productivity means isolation, fear and loneliness. I want my life as a graduate student to be multifaceted and I want to produce my best work out of a place of self-care and self-respect. Given the pressures of graduate school and academia, not to mention today’s precarious political, economic and pandemic climate, how do we maintain healthy lives as graduate students? How do we actively combat negative tendencies or harmful thought patterns, mindful that some are at a greater risk of developing mental health disorders than others? How do we support one another? How do we take this conscientiousness into the classroom as teachers? These are the kinds of questions I hope my workshop session can explore, first directed by two readings from How to Build a Life in the Humanities; Meditations on the Academic Work-Life Balance. Written by Greg Colon Semenza and Garrett A. Sullivan Jr., How to Build a Life is a collection of twenty-five short essays, written by scholars with a variety of positions at different institutions. The collection seeks to answer the question, how do you build a good career and a good life in the humanities? As a “collective meditation,” it draws on scholars’ personal insight on issues ranging from depression, to raising children, to race, gender and disability in academia, to working in a research institution or community college, to life on and off the tenure track.  Written for a wide academic audience, some topics naturally appeal more to early scholars or to those later along in their careers. 

            For our workshop session, I have chosen two chapters from this collection, the first of which is Chapter Eight, “Imposter Phenomenon” by Natalie M. Houston. Houston, Associate Professor of English at the University of Houston, discusses the feelings that accompany the dreaded “Imposter Phenomenon,” what contributes to these feelings, and how to address them. The author provides strategies we can put into action to combat these feelings and reclaim agency, drawing on her personal experience as a student and professor. I think this reading can be appreciated by anyone who struggles with “imposter phenomenon” as Houston calls it, but I find it particularly relevant for us as first year doctoral students. The next chapter I hope proves useful is Chapter Nine, “Academic Guilt,” by Giuseppina Iacono Lobo, Assistant Professor at Loyola University Maryland. Lobo explores the definition of guilt, specifically academic guilt, why we feel guilty when we are not working, and guilt as a motivator versus an inhibitor. She draws on her experience as a student, professor and mother, and tracks her shifting experience of academic guilt as she grows older. I hope this reading can encourage an open conversation on how, when and why we experience and combat academic guilt.

I would also like to include a critical article published this February in College Composition and Communication entitled “Self-Care as Professionalization: A Case for Ethical Doctoral Education in Composition Studies.” Through surveys and interviews with 433 doctoral faculty and students, the authors examine self-care practices in academia, the barriers to these practices, and the value of including self-care as professional practice. Although this is written with the composition community specifically in mind, it has relevance for all disciplines. I hope this piece can encourage us to reflect on how we can best integrate and model self-care practices in the classroom, as students and teachers. I would like to supplement this reading with another article which I think gives greater voice to the diverging experience of mental health disorders, particularly in the context of the pandemic. The study, “Undergraduate and Graduate Students’ Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” published this August, reveals how the pandemic has significantly impacted anxiety and depressive disorder rates since 2019, paying particular attention to its impact on women, low-income students, students of color, queer students and students who are caregivers. It would be great to use this to discuss how COVID has specifically impacted mental health/mental health resources in the CUNY community.  

Finally, I’m including a few supplemental readings if anyone is interested in exploring further. Pick and choose as your time allows!  

• “Time Management and Timelessness” in The Slow Professor by : This chapter explores how creativity and productivity can flow from play, rest and pause. Although the book has been criticized given the privileged perspective of its two authors (white women occupying tenure track positions) it offers insight into the value of “slowness” in the corporatized academy. 
• “Time Out” from the Supervalent Thought Blog by Lauren Berlant, Professor of English at the University of Chicago. A post that explores a few “unscheduled” days and thoughts in the life of Berlant — particularly from a stylistic perspective, an interesting take on what it means to take time out. 
• “Blissful Blundering: Embracing Deficiency and Surviving Graduate School”  by Emily Pabst. A short piece on “being good at being not good.” How do we “appreciate the part of oneself that is…terrible at things?” to better overcome failure and rejection as students (Pabst 94)? 
• CUNY Mental Health Resources: this seems like a good moment to look at CUNY’s services and resources!

This semester, I’m taking a few classes outside of my area of special interest. So far, it’s been a great opportunity to read unfamiliar material, broaden my knowledge base and make some interesting connections to my interest area. But it comes with the real challenge of entering into a particular discourse that other students already seem to speak fluently. Sometimes I feel like I’m just trying to translate what people are talking about…examples from last week in the zoom classroom: Who is this theorist X student keeps referring to? What is this outside text everyone seems to know and is discussing? What does this acronym mean? In light of these thoughts, I appreciated Rogers’ emphasis on the value of learning and acclimating in Chapter 3, when she quotes early modernist Sarah Werner: “‘ I spent a lot of time at first feeling nervous about how much I didn’t know; now I realize it’s okay not to know things, since the skill is learning them, not already knowing them.’” Here Werner is talking about her first job, but I think it’s just as relevant for first year students. It’s the ability to learn that is essential, not the knowledge I have (or have not) already accumulated. 

In light of this issue of “imposter syndrome” I appreciated Rogers’ discussion of peer mentoring. Noting Kandice Chuh, she discusses how peer mentoring allows students to be both expert and novice simultaneously, creating, “a combination of confidence and humility that makes it far easier to share what one knows without being afraid to admit that there is still much to learn” (55). One of our greatest assets as we embark on this half decade (or more) of learning, is one another. How can we act as peer mentors for one another inside and outside the classroom? How do we help to create an atmosphere that encourages confidence and humility? And thinking about teaching next year, how do we cultivate this same atmosphere in our future classrooms, physical or virtual? 

Reflecting on how we can mentor one another leads me to think about Rogers’ discussion of tacit PhD knowledge, that stuff that “greases the wheels” (55). I know I am where I am today, because I was privileged to receive these kinds of tacit knowledge morsels, from applying to college to applying to grad school — how to structure an admissions essay, the right phrasing on a paper abstract, advice on what to wear (or what not to wear) to academic events, I could go on and on. After reading this chapter, I took some time to look at Aimée Morrison’s Hook and Eye Blog and #tacitPhD on twitter (particularly appreciated Dr Richard Graham’s tweets, “My most productive “networking” was never under the guise of networking, it was chatting to humans about genuine interests” or “Taking weekends and evenings off is more productive in the long term. Trying to work every second of the day won’t work out well”). I wonder if there’s a way for us as a cohort to compile a similar kind of #tacit phd compendium of what we are learning along the way. How can we make CUNY more equitable by sharing this kind of tacit knowledge with one another? I’m also thinking about my undergraduate education. What are those pieces of tacit knowledge that I have the power and responsibility to share? How can I do this successfully with my future students?

I also appreciated Rogers’ discussion of the importance of the life of the mind and the body. We are all here because we are passionate about what we study; but working for love, as Rogers describes, does not negate the material reality of “wages, benefits, and working conditions” (22). As Rogers describes, by treating teaching as a noble, love-driven calling, it is more easily exploitable. I loved this quote:  

“The idea that the life of the mind is somehow separate and independent from physical well-being is most often rooted in the privilege of material security. To be sure, the pleasure of pursuing knowledge is one of the deep satisfactions of advanced graduate study—but scholars still have to make rent.”  (23) 

When the mind and the body are not equally valued – hierarchically compartmentalized, if you will –  everyone, in the end, suffers; those who were thinking about teaching are dissuaded because of material insecurity, great teachers cannot continue teaching without benefits, students suffer because their adjunct professor cannot give them individualized support. It’s a vicious cycle. Valuing people’s bodies and wellbeing allows the creation of valuable work. It is essential that we push for better wages, benefits, and stable positions, not only so I can pay the rent (!) but also for the health of the whole institution.

Starting off this post in agreement with Alessandra about the “slightly meta” nature of  discussing Brier and Fabricant on CUNY Commons. It was an odd, inception-like experience, to read about the technology of one’s own institution, and the history behind it, while using it in a separate window. When I got my CUNYFirst account in August, I wondered about the bizarre language like “Human Capital Management.” To read that this technology was a $600 million expense, and an “off-the-shelf system,” developed as a business software in the first place, emphasizes the starkly intimate connection between private profit and our own education (97). I am part of the capital.

Thinking about this monetization of higher education in Austerity Blues has left me feeling quite dejected. I knew things were bad; this book reinforced how bad. The political and economic landscape the authors outline in 2016 is bleak —  let alone factoring in how our current economic state of affairs is contributing to and will continue to impact austerity measures. As the authors state, “the politics of austerity is largely a politics of disposability for populations defined as disposable. Paradoxically, institutions of public higher education that have helped to alter life trajectories for students and communities are now increasingly reinforcing, deepening, and extending experiences of disposability” (251). In a climate where the most essential workers, disproportionately poorer people of color, are treated as disposable, how will “the politics of disposability” continue to make the most essential education the most hollow and diluted, deepening these experiences of disposability? I think of my sister’s school district. The private schools in the community have individualized student work plans, teaching training, and enough technology to make the transition to distance learning fairly quickly. The public schools meanwhile, like so many elsewhere across the country, are struggling to adapt. In March, working parents were forced to homeschool their children for weeks before the school found enough laptops to make distance learning work. Not to mention how distance learning itself can collapse feelings of equality in the classroom, as zoom backgrounds expose class difference. I fear for the future, particularly when the present is already so challenging and disheartening.

Is there hope for “redistributive investment, emancipatory education, and most importantly social justice?” (251). The authors outline that if there is, new forms of technology, shaped by faculty and students, and divorced from private interest, must be part of the solution (251). Is this kind of technology possible? I think if there is a critical juncture where we will find out, it is now, as we are all forced to enter into this online learning experiment. The first of its kind!

On a tentatively hopeful note, I am reminded of the emphasis on hapticality in The Undercommons. Moten and Harney suggest that there is a “ touch of the undercommons, the interiority of sentiment, the feel that what is to come is here. Hapticality, the capacity to feel though others, for others to feel through you, for you to feel them feeling you, this feel of the shipped is not regulated, at least not successfully, by a state, a religion, a people, an empire, a piece of land, a totem” (98).  While distance-learning technology physically separates students from students, teachers from students, and teachers from teachers, it also paradoxically allows an element of humanity to re-enter back into these virtually cultivated relationships. Where private interest would seek to commercialize the learning experience in terms of efficiency and capital, right now, in our bumbling learning stages, you can’t help but hear a professor’s dog barking, a peer’s infant crying, or see a much needed cup of coffee magically appear in a background thanks to someone’s friend, parent or partner. Not to mention the shared struggles of remembering to press mute! Right now it seems like we are all a little bit more vulnerable and a little bit more human. 

Could online learning not only “distribute and organize knowledge” for the needs of public higher education but also enhance the “capacity to feel through others” and “for others to feel through you?” If this kind of humanity is preserved in this online space, could it deepen or enhance the “touch of the undercommons?” I would like to hope so, and I imagine we will find out.  

I feel like I need another week to sit and process The Undercommons! To echo Sandra, the language and ideas were certainly difficult to grasp. At times I was confused, frustrated, and honestly a bit lost. Other times, particularly on re-reading, delighted and challenged.

The process of reading The Undercommons reminds me of when I encountered Jean Toomer’s Cane, during an undergraduate course on the Harlem Renaissance. Cane, if anyone is unfamiliar, was published in 1923 as a series of vignettes focused on the black American experience. Toomer paints a portrait of southern urban and rural life, entwining prose, poetry and play-like dialogue. Toomer’s vignettes stand alone. Yet they also work together, as characters, motifs, and stories resurface in unexpected ways, resisting finite interpretation and inviting continued redefinition and nuanced understanding on the part of the reader. Both frustrating and freeing!

I saw this similar concept of textual openness in The Undercommons, which Zoe also points to. This passage on page 107 interests me as well:

….I’m playing with something rather than that it’s finished. If I’m going along in a kind of ‘duh dum duh dum duh dum’ rhyming kind of way in the writing, it’s partly to say that we’re in rehearsal here. And since we’re rehearsing, you might as well pick up an instrument too. So, for me, it must be right there in the writing in some form. It’s not enough to signal it outside the writing, to send the piece out and to say, ‘oh, really this is still open for this or that.’ It has to be somehow in the writing itself that the thing hasn’t closed off. Part of that is that to write with another person is, in a sense, always to keep something open, because you always have the question of, “do they both think that way, who said that?” Instead of worrying about that, I think that’s nice. That means that the text is already open to more than one, in that sense. (107)

I love this idea of “playing” in writing that Harney talks about, and how its reflected in the rhythm of his prose. I particularly see this playfulness in “Debt and Study:” “They’re building something in there, something down there. Mutual debt, debt unpayable, debt unbounded, debt unconsolidated, debt to each other in a study group, to others in a nurses’ room, to others in a barber shop, to others in a squat, a dump, a woods, a bed, an embrace” (67). The repetition and escalating rhythm of this sentence, gives the term “debt” and the realm of the undercommons, a sense of vivacity, openness and flux. It resists bounded structure and singular explanation. Seeing the text as a playful “rehearsal” also helped me resist trying to arrive at a “finished” definition of terms like “debt” or “owe” or “study” after each chapter, and instead, to quote Moten, “take some of it, take something from it, and make [my] own way away from it (111).

How do we give our own writing this sense of openness or rehearsal? How do we invite others to participate in it? And make space for their own contribution?

Speaking of “playfulness” also prompted me to think about how much of The Undercommons relies on metaphors or imagery to do with children. For example, in the context of using terms in new ways, Moten gives the example of his kids using toys for alternate purposes – like a sword to hit a ball (106). How do we encourage this kind of rebellious childlike creativity in our own study? How do we resist being “called to order” so that this kind of imagination – one where a sword can hit a ball – flourishes?

Similarly, in the interview, when Moten discusses the abolition of credit or accounting (an idea I’m still trying to understand…), he encourages us to think about our attitude towards feeding a “kid on the street” versus a grown adult. With a child, we naturally feel responsible for feeding them, while it is easier to reject the idea that we are responsible for feeding an adult (156). Putting this example into conversation with the idea of “mutual debt,” if we all “owe each other everything,” as the authors give voice to in Chapter 1 (20), then we all owe each other a meal. And simultaneously, we are all that “kids on the street” asking for a meal. In this socially distanced space, how do we ask for and provide nourishment to one another?

Finally, as the authors discuss in the interview section, even the nature of intellectual work should be fun and enjoyable – like play – rather than a “naturalisation of misery, the belief that intellectual work requires alienation and immobility and that the ensuing pain and nausea is a kind of badge of honor…” (117). Very relatable! I can think of so many moments during my undergraduate career where an all-nighter at the library was revered as a “badge of honor” and where one’s weariness falsely equaled value and productivity. If we are to redefine study as a kind of child-like play, then how can we validate enjoyment and encourage it in one other? Play also tends to be communal. So how do we rally against feelings of isolation, alienation, exclusion or loneliness, as Stefanie touches on?

A few thoughts but looking forward to discussing with you all tomorrow.