Creating in Dialogue: Building Communities of Thought
I was supposed to write a blog on the increased value of clicks on websites in pandemic times where almost all interactions are done virtually. However, this would have been a rather cynical take and then actual positive and nice things happened so I decide to write about those things instead.
One thing that this pandemic has allowed me, more than usual or ever for that matter, is the ability to collaborate on articles with colleagues and friends. I have been reflecting on this quite a bit this week and all the threads that are connected to this ability to write and think together. For example, I was lucky enough to write an article with my friend Duc and our shared interest and research in tactile studies that was published last year. I am also in the process of working through a revise and resubmit of an article with 2 friends/colleagues that seems to be going well so far.
This line of thinking about collaboration and creating together was brought about by two things. The first, is that I found out this week that an article on UDL that I wrote with a friend/colleague has been accepted for publication and should be out in a few months. This is super exciting news and I can't wait to share the article with all of you. It was also a ridiculously wonderful and rewarding process because we discovered that we really work well together, which is what I want to focus on.
The ability to create and think through ideas with a person in dialogue is not something that comes often. Ideally this is what conferences were supposed to be, a way of workshopping new ideas, to be in dialogue with colleagues and build from that community of thought. Instead conferences have sadly, for the most part, become expensive things where there's comments posed as questions and a lot of shaming. But when you create with someone who shares your passion about something, or when you go to a conference like UDLHE where there is real community building opportunities (shout out to the trauma-informed discussion group people, a group that is a direct result of this conference) then it makes the process of creation and thought so much more meaningful.
In my article writing processes with colleagues we write our parts in a shared document and then review and edit together. With this UDL article, another level that was added to this process was to meet on Zoom on a regular basis which allowed us to build our piece in a way that reflected the community that we were speaking to. It made me realize that being in dialogue in an instantaneous manner is also an important part of the creation that goes beyond the page and reaches the spaces that we would like to see more of in academe. These are spaces that didn't exist much pre-pandemic because of schedules and geographic distance.
The second thing that really made me happy in terms of collaboration and creating together this week is that towards the end of the work week I had a meeting with my coworker colleague about an abstract proposal that was just.a.really.great.meeting. With all the full stops. We have both been working a lot on different projects and tasks but we haven't really had time to work closely together on a thing that was coming from our thoughts and framework that wasn't an ask for a resource to support instructors. I called it spinning ideas because it was really that sort of dialogue. She would say something, that would spark an idea I wrote down, then I would say something or suggest an article, and then she would write that thing down. It was the feeling you have when you know you have found your people, intellectually. This has only happened to me a couple of times in my life so it is always nice when it does happen.
I spent yesterday reading and thinking as a direct result of this meeting. I had all the thoughts running through my head and it was the first time in a while where I was excited about what I was thinking through. So maybe this pandemic is a way to give us more opportunities to build communities of thought. We speak a lot about creating community and the difficulty to sustain this lately, but maybe it is because we also need to be building communities of thought, and not just holding space. Holding space is important and foundational definitely, but what comes after this? Having the opportunity to create in dialogue, whether it be in a meeting, during a discussion group, or in an article is a special opportunity. I wish we had more of these opportunities and in some ways this is what I wish for with these blog posts too. If one person has a thought from what I have written here and they share that with another and so on (visions of rhizomes danced in her head) that's a happy thought. We spend a lot of time trying to quantify outreach; maybe what we really should focus on are the communities of thought that are built and sustained. I need to stop here because the way I see that being represented is basically Alice Pieszecki's Chart from the L Word and that is just enough of me for today.
Books I Read Last Week
The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams
See review of Williams' book here
The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack
See review of Mack's book here
Intelligence in the Flesh by Guy Claxton
See review of Claxton's book here
Want by Lynn Steger Strong
See review of Steger Strong's book here
Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks
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