#CitePedagogy
Felt Notes
“Citation is feminist memory. Citation is how we acknowledge our debt to those who came before; those who helped us find our way when the way was obscured because we deviated from the paths we were told to follow.” — Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (2017:15)
“#CitePedagogy . . . If we want pedagogy to count, we need to make syllabi, assignments, and course descriptions a part of the scholarly record by citing the colleagues whose work we build on, including citations in our syllabi, and preserving our classroom-based work in repositories.” — Matthew K. Gold, Digital Humanities Summer Institute Lecture (2019)
At the Just Futures Co-lab, I have always encouraged my students to think citationally, to deepen citational ethics and politics by including not just minoritized sites, voices, and producers of knowledge, but also both classroom and non-classroom pedagogies that are actively challenging the status-quo and unjust relations of power through time and with the digital. I continue to ask myself and student members to be in dialogue with syllabi (and their annotated-collectivized livingness); to keep filling the worlds we inhabit with teaching frameworks and formative sources; to demonstrate the connections between research and pedagogy; to write about pedagogies and their contributions to making our work possible; to help situate our inquiries and ourselves across precarities; and to demonstrate being in community.
I am indebted to Sara Ahmed for her discourse on queer-feminist citational politics or what it means to cite those (ideas and people) “who helped us find our way.” I am also indebted to Matthew K. Gold for drawing attention to the significance of citing pedagogy in building a scholarly record—and for inviting us all to view pedagogy as scholarship at DHSI 2019. In one of my co-authored pieces (with Ashley Caranto Morford and Arun Jacob) published in Digital Studies / Le champ numérique under the collection titled “Transforming DH Pedagogy” (2021), we try to model these values and orientations. Additionally, in our parallel and interconnected lives across institutional and community affiliations, we as a collective have been depositing materials to the HCommons repository (2019-Present).
Currently, the syllabi of courses and workshops constituting the pedagogy agenda of the Just Futures Co-lab are available in print and as part of the lab’s reading resources for anyone visiting or learning on campus. A few courses like the 2022 Care Matters and Justice Dreams studio have resulted in PDF studio books licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 International License while others like the Interlude 2022 zine of archival metadata responding to the question of inhabiting learning were produced with the intention to be circulated only in limited edition prints among trusted networks. Each semester, with contributions from participating student members, I also produce detailed lab reports that serve not just as documentations of life in each transdisciplinary research cycle, but also as “citational habits” (2015) in Sara Ahmed’s words to help us reflect on the process of building new critiques and worlds. How might these materials and others under review and still others published in online proceedings continue to find an ongoing (or even wider) readership and use if stored in open-access digital repositories? How am I in conversation with other labs raising similar questions? And in what ways might the Just Futures Co-lab participate in the production of scholarly and cultural records, whilst also balancing concerns and desires for privacy? These are some of my musings from this month, which I hope make sense. If you have any questions or thoughts, I would love to hear from you!
Notes
[1] Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017): 15.
[2] —.“Feminist Shelters,” feministkilljoys Blog (December 30, 2015).
[3] Matthew K. Gold, “Institute Lecture,” Digital Humanities Summer Institute (Victoria: University of Victoria, BC, 2019). The hashtag #CitePedagogy quickly took a discursive form and shape on Twitter in the context of this talk.
[4] Nadine Boulay, Ashley Caranto Morford, Arun Jacob, Kush Patel, Kimberly O’Donnell O'Donnell, “Transforming DH Pedagogy,” Digital Studies/le Champ Numérique 11(1) (2021), https://www.digitalstudies.org/articles/10.16995/dscn.379/
[5] “Pedagogy of the Digitally Oppressed: Critiques and Praxis,” CORE Collection on Humanities Commons [Membership Access Only].
Opportunities
+ Call for Participation: Creative Coding Santè Community Conference (March 3, 2024), Science Gallery Bengaluru (The event is free, but RSVP is required).
+ Jobs: Gender and Digital Economy Research Associate, IT for Change (Deadline: March 15, 2024)
+ Jobs: A Digital Accessibility Job Board (for folx working on assistive technologies) (Global, Ongoing).
+ Call for Submissions: The Youth Storytelling Project (Queerbeat and We Are Family Foundation) (Deadline: March 14, 2024)
+ Call for Submissions: Little Puss Press (original manuscripts of fiction and non-fiction, including works-in-progress. The Press is also considering reprint proposals of literary/historical works of significance by transgender authors (Deadline: Ongoing)
+ Call for Participation: Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) 2024 at the University of Victoria, Victoria (Early Registration Deadline: April 1, 2024 / Regular Registration Deadline: June 1, 2024)
+ Call for Proposals: SEA Pavilion Designs Responding to the Monsoon and Climate Change, School of Environment and Architecture (SEA, Mumbai), in conversation with Raqs Media Collective, Delhi and Invisible Dust U.K. and in partnership with the Design Village with the support of the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai (Deadline: April 30, 2024)
About
Felt Notes are monthly dispatches about the work of the Just Futures Co-lab, and the co-labouring worlds of research and teaching in art, design, and the digital humanities that it scaffolds, furthers, and amplifies. The letter writing translates the ever so negotiated nature of this space at Srishti Manipal Institute and the discourse and scholarship on equity and justice we produce through critical pedagogy; archives and databases; interactive digital storytelling; and inquiries into queer-feminist media technologies and infrastructures.
I hope reading this letter and its upcoming segments are a meaningful experience for you. If you aren’t subscribed yet, you may do so here. If you are already subscribed, I would love for you to share the link with friends and trusted networks as we make sense of our relationships to technology as well as our relationships to each other via technology. If you would like to write or co-write a letter in the future or share any announcements, please feel free to get in touch with me, and whilst you’re here, please also check out the Felt Notes Archive.
Kush Patel