Why did you apply to HASTAC?
When I learned about HASTAC Scholars, I was in the midst of preparing for my thesis defense. As the time left in the final semester of my master’s program dwindled, I grew increasingly more aware of the inevitable divide between myself and the world of academics that would reveal itself once I graduated – it had happened before, after undergrad. I was more wary of such a rift this time around, though, because I was (and still am) trying to decide whether or not to pursue a PhD. However, as much as I would love to for self-edification, due to the prospect of lost earnings, my deciding factor is whether I ultimately want to be a professor. TBD! In any case, assuming that the farther removed from academia I get, the harder it will be for me to make this decision, I had been looking for ways to remain connected with other scholars and graduate students. HASTAC immediately stood out to me as an opportunity to do just that.
What has been your favorite course so far as an instructor or student? Why?
As a master’s student, I only had the opportunity to work as a teaching assistant once, so my answer here is with regard to my favorite course taken as a student. Led by the cultural anthropologist, Christine Folch (a total superstar), the class was called Theorizing Environment. Taught seminar style, the content was highly interdisciplinary and featured readings pertaining to the environment, political ecology, and the socio-cultural/political economic construction of space. Although my primary field is art history, I double majored in geography and art history in undergrad, and my research interests remain situated in the overlap of these areas of study. As such, this course was slightly outside of the scholarship I was most familiar with, yet it provided me with concepts that are wholly relevant to my work. I will be forever indebted to Dr. Folch for breaking my brain with Doreen Massey! Moreover, it was inspiring to learn about work like Marisol de la Cadena’s Earth Beings, which I feel reflects an ethical and embodied approach to research, and beautifully navigates the impossibility of knowing ways of being that are not ours to know.
What’s something that people would be surprised to know about you?
People are often surprised to learn that I am neurodivergent. Learning this about myself in adulthood even surprised me a bit. But it also explains a lot – ha!
I am learning more about myself and how I process the world around me each day, but because I have lived the majority of my life under the impression that I was neurotypical, it’s been challenging to parse out.
That said, during grad school, I did notice that some of the approaches to assignment completion and studying I had developed in undergrad were more akin to coping/survival strategies than to positive learning habits. I was able to apply some of what I was learning about myself towards refining those approaches to be more sustainable and supportive of my needs. For example, I began listening to some of the academic papers I needed to read, using talk-to-text functions on my phone to write assignment outlines by ‘thinking out loud’, and taking pictures/drawing during class to aid my notes.
I also leaned into my tendency to over-explain/communicate when it came to my concerns and confusions pertaining to my thesis and the general logistics of graduate school. In the past, anxiety around how others perceive my communication differences led me to suppress this inclination, but in learning more about myself, I was able to embrace my communication style by recognizing that it is not wrong, simply different, and that it’s important for me because it reflects how I process information. This was very helpful for me in building and navigating relationships with professors, and in ensuring I was on top of everything I needed to be. However, it may have bled into my writing process a bit too much…
What are some things that you wish you had known before you got into graduate school?
I wouldn’t say this is something I wish I had ‘known’ before graduate school – at least not in any complete sense of the word – but rather, it would have been helpful for me to be more aware of my personal shortcomings, specifically in the context of my writing process. Concision is my biggest obstacle (before grad school, it had been a long time since I had written academically, so I guess I forgot?!), and had I realized this prior to beginning my thesis, I would have at least tried to develop and practice a strategy for dealing with it. Alas, instead, I learned through the process of writing, which resulted in around 80 pages of content that ultimately did not make my final draft.
Additionally, echoing some previous scholar spotlights, I wish I knew more about writing for publishing. In my final semester, a professor told me to treat every assignment like it was being published. It’s the best advice I received while in grad school, but I heard it too late in the game to apply it in any meaningful way to my development as a scholar while earning my master’s. Even if none of what I wrote during my program really got published, the process of approaching my writing that way would have been undoubtedly helpful to my career. Perhaps doing so would even have provided me some insight regarding whether ‘professor life’ is for me, since publishing is such an important aspect of that career.
How do you envision HASTAC and higher education in 10 years? Where do you fit in?
I think cross-disciplinary collaboration and the application of digital research methods within humanities higher education is bound to increase in popularity over the next decade. Both go hand in hand, and as technology becomes more embedded in the quotidian processes of life and work, it seems inevitable, or even impossible to resist. Unsurprisingly, the digital humanities were early on that train, and as an organization, HASTAC reflects this – both in the interdisciplinary nature of its fellows’ interests, and in its approach to providing opportunities for cross-pollination. As such, I can only imagine HASTAC continuing to thrive as other academic disciplines get on board.
I am positioned somewhat uniquely in the nexus of multiple areas of study, and I have witnessed the resistance to the use of critical digital research methods among sects of humanities scholars first-hand. For example, there’s a bit of a rift between the position of digital art historians and that of traditional art historians, with some individuals who identify as the latter arguing fervently that there are crucial differences in the theoretical frameworks that undergird each, and that DAH is uncritical – as if to imply an inherent hierarchy of value. Ongoing debates between Claire Bishop and Johanna Drucker evidence this divide.
Personally, I reject treating such categories and labels preciously – perhaps because I view the future of humanities-oriented higher education as increasingly promotive of cross-disciplinary collaboration and reliant on digital research methods. For me, what Drucker’s and Bishop’s debate foregrounds is the existence of circularity within academia that’s rooted in western hegemonic notions of knowledge production – not regarding their individual arguments, but rather, the very existence of the debate. Anything contributing to the ways that we, as humans, can understand the world (and the mini-worlds we’ve constructed within it) carries value, and there is no point in obfuscating or denying this truth other than to elevate one’s own epistemic position.
In any case, my hope for the future of higher education, and for my own place within it, is that through the increased embrace of cross-disciplinary collaboration and the application of digital research methods, more scholars will stop drawing lines in the sand in exchange for interrogating more closely how legacies of colonialism persist in influencing what is accepted as valid forms of knowledge and knowledge production.
How does digital scholarship fit into your research or teaching?
Presently, my biggest and broadest research inquiry centers on the potential of contemporary art to function as decolonial praxis. Thus, I think a lot about the work that public art performs in the (re)production of space, and scale plays a major role in my research. My master’s thesis examined the artistic interventions of two prominent artist-led civic movements in Cuba – Movimiento San Isidro and 27N – and their members. I explored how these public artworks might be rendered legible as decolonial praxis and what the implications of doing so might be by way of a two-part methodology: exploratory mapping in digital and analog forms, and critical feminist and queer phenomenological analysis undergirded by Doreen Massey’s relational spatial theory.
While the digital theoretically enabled an investigation into site-making on an expansive scale, phenomenology offered insight into ‘being’ in the context of specific sites of artmaking. Both analytical methods appear crucial to me, but in terms of how digital scholarship specifically fits into my research, I would say it primarily surfaces in my exploratory mapping practice, which typically involves the generation and analysis of 2D and 3D spatial data in ArcGIS Pro.
What do you hope to accomplish with your research or teaching?
It is undeniably cheesy, and admittedly individually unachievable, but I think that humanities research, broadly, has the power to encourage people to embrace multiperspectivity, thus (presumably) making the world a better place. If my research and/or teaching can move that needle for even just a few individuals, I would be content.
What are you currently reading, watching, and/or listening to?
I am currently reading Black Pedro Pan by Ricardo E. Gonzalez Zayas, as well as the manuscript of a yet unpublished book that I was hired to develop a digital counterpart for – it’s top secret!
After graduating in December 2023, I moved back to Long Beach, CA. So, to get me back in The Beach Mindset, I have been listening to the album Ramona Park Broke My Heart by LB’s very own, Vince Staples.
In terms of watching, I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I was recently sucked back into the Below Deck vortex. If anyone is looking for me in the near future, they can probably catch me hanging out down under with Captain Jason, while working on my elaborate nail art.