Day 5

Time is moving fast. It doesn't help that I keep sleeping until 9am and the sun starts setting around 4pm (so much better than the 3:30 of a month ago....but still). Today I swam. Walked the dog. Tried not to shovel snow (PT has me off the shoveling re: back issues). I had every intention of going to the office to work on my good computer, but while driving there I decided against it and got Chinese takeout for lunch instead. I need a ninja to sneak in, get my computer (and my sun lamp), and get out! In terms of my work, the research thing, the sabbatical thing (this Sicilian thing...sorry, Kaye Corleone I love you) I finally started looking at my video footage from the last time I was in the UP.

There's always this trick for me with research, particularly with video footage. At the time I'm interviewing people, I hear certain things, catch certain things. After I leave, some of those stay with me, some solidify, some disappear. Then, I'll go back, days, weeks, in this case months, later, rewatch my footage and often hear new things, remember old things, and work to strike that balance between listening for what I want to her and hearing what is actually said.

I just watched about 30 minutes of footage I took while chatting with Charlotte at her home on the rez in Baraga. She totally schooled me in trees, that I know for sure. She showed me how to make a birch bark ring (and gifted me w/ one as I left). She talked about how the birch are dying, why they are dying, how we might respect them more. She talked about basket making, about spirit baskets vs "baskets to put stuff in" (big difference). And as I watched, I felt totally humbled to have been gifted these stories, and honestly a bit strange, almost embarrassed somehow, that I intend to use these stories in my research. I can reframe that statement, that I'm regifting these stories in Our research, but I'm honestly not sure at times if that's just a slight of hand to get me off of some ethical hook. Then again, I'm not sure what the ethical hook is. I know the critiques and cautions Mihesuah lodges against folks doing this work (see So You Want to Write About American Indians?), and much if it seems commonsensical to me. I'm not actively doing anything shady, I know that for sure, but there is something that makes me nervous, hesitant, about regifting the stories others have gifted to me. Yes, they signed the IRB forms, yes they know what I'm doing, but I remain...uncertain.

And what I see in Charlotte's eyes as she graciously tells me stories--stories she tells while her adorable grandaughter runs around the house, her son's friend visits before leaving town, her son works on collecting some herbs from the yard, her friend visits to pick up a beehive--is a mix of welcoming and hesitation. A mix of wanting to share these stories with me, but of being nervous about what my intentions are, about how I might regift them and to what ends.

For some reason, while I sat here pondering this, I decided to crack open my mom's dissertation which I've only read parts of. Let me tell you, it's really fucking good. But the part I opened up to today, for no real reason other than dumb luck, was a page that starts,

In thinking about my professional work, there are times that I get so hung up on the "hows," I forget or bypass the "whys." (p18, Jill Hodges, Being-In-Relation-To: Personal Writing in Nontraditional Scholarship)

So, let me move forward,with a clearer why. I know why...I think I do... but it's hard to unpack. On the surface, it's that I want digital humanists, computers & composition folks, heck all teachers, to think about the ways in which they teach and share knowledge, and to consider how entrenched we often are in western-masculinist ways of knowing and doing. I want to show, I want people to hear, that there are other ways of being, doing, crafting, building, teaching, acting. But, in doing so, I don't want these voices to be essentialized or tokenized or fetishized. And the University is so fucking good at that.

That's certainly part of my why, but there's more, and it has something to do with having to pass hunter's safety to pass 6th grade. And I can't quite suss that out yet.

Days 3 & 4

Who knew it'd be so hard to ignore student queries in the ol' inbox? It's HARD! But, I keep having to remind myself that they're getting my "bug someone else" away message, so I imagine they can take care of themselves. Yeah yeah yeah, I know they can, but one of my best and worst qualities is my overwhelming desire to fix other people's shit. Gonna have to work on that.

That being said, well, days 3 and 4... thinking more, reading some. My research has really landed with 2 distinct, yet quite related, areas of interest. And, I'm trying to think through how to flesh each one out and how to connect them. These areas are:

1. Rethinking/enriching the justification paper as it is positioned in digital work. That is, those of us teaching multimodal/digital work usually require some sort of justification statement (or as Shipka has students do, a Statement of Goals and Choices, the sogc). In talking with indigenous folks as they craft various cultural objects (regalia, beadwork, frybread!!, etc) I've come to this place:
   

   As teachers and scholars, looking to other types of making beyond the classroom, and listening to these stories, (and even considering bringing these into the classroom) can help enrich our understandings of multimodal production and analysis, and I believe helps to, as bell hooks suggests, “teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students” so that we can “provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin.” Such work provides, I believe, a conscious awareness, and as Devitt reminds us: “conscious awareness of anything makes mindful living more possible than it would be otherwise” (Amy Devitt, Writing Genres, 2004. Pg 202).

2. Questioning the value of coding literacy as it is understood by those in the c&c world and/or DH world. That is, to be a Real dh-er or digital scholar or teacher, does one have to be, and teach, coding? And what is wrapped up with notions of 'right' and 'wrong' when it comes to digital production? Again, turning to indigenous making practices, I see over and over again this teaching or knowledge of the right way to do something (hand-sewing fringe on a shawl, or hand winnowing wild rice) but then often an enactment of the 'wrong' way (using pre-sewn fringe or a mechanical winnower). 

There's a lot a lot a lot I can say, and many others have taught/shared/storied me about these two areas, and i WILL Say more, but for now I'm trying to remind myself of these two areas, see how far I've got in my previous conference papers on both topics, and to see where I need to go next.

In addition to thinking through those areas, I spent today rereading Kristin Prins' article "Crafting New Approaches to Composition" from my and Anne's book. I've been rethinking composition as craft and Prins helps me think through this, as well as think through the differences between composition as design vs. composition as craft. This reminds me to reread Bob Johnson's User-Centered Technology, and to read the big ol' list of readings Bob suggested to me this past fall at the Writing Across the Peninsulas conference.

I also spent some time digging around the new OA journal: Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. I've got a lot more to say about that, but for now, I need to get my butt to campus so as to see the visiting artist lecture by Randy Bolton. fyi: "Randy Bolton’s work is characterized by an exploration of images that seem familiar and comforting on first glance, but become strange and disturbing on further consideration. His prints borrow from and adapt the nostalgia-evolving illustrations of early children’s books and science texts.... learn more!

Day 2

I haven't had a flu shot in 10 years. Somehow, this semester, when I will hardly have any contact with students other than the checkout keypad at Dissmores, I decided to get one. So, yeah, I did that today. Got my hair done. Went to PT for my back and knee. Bought a scale. Umm....I fear today's progress on my project reads more like fodder for a Fox News Expose on liberal academics and sabbatical. Though it would've helped if I had a cocktail lunch. Dammit, I should've done that. Tomorrow I will think harder, do better. Tomorrow.

Day 1

I am a scheduled person. I have been on an academic schedule since Fall of 1980 when I started Kindergarten at Dollar Bay Elementary School (T.R. Davis represent). This, January 2013, is the first time since January of 1979 when I have not gone back to school. I am on sabbatical, so don't feel like doing math, but trust me, that's a long ass time. In that time, I graduated from Dollar Bay High School ('94) with nearly the same 26 people I started kindergarten with, I graduated from the University of Michigan ('98) with a BA in English, I flirted with a MA from Northern Arizona University but found myself back home at Upper Michigan where I earned both an MA ('01) and PhD ('06) in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Michigan Technological University, and promptly found myself in a TT job at Washington State University where I recently earned tenure ('12). (wait, can you do that '12 thing w/ tenure? a sign of too much schooling...). Suffice it to say, I'm really good a jumping through other people's hoops, and I'm really good at starting semesters (and finishing them!)

So, here I am, a 36-year old recently tenured lady on her first sabbatical. A sabbatical for which I do have plans that involve more than swimming laps and watching Days of Our Lives. The proposal was too many pages long, but in short, it says this:

...In sum, receiving sabbatical for Spring 2013 will allow me to work on a book-length project, American Indian Approaches to Digital Pedagogy. My objectives for this project are that by exploring and documenting the crafting practices of the Anishinaabe peoples, I will come to a deeper understanding of how culture is maintained and transformed through teaching. This work will not only speak to those interested in the transmission of cultural knowledge, but will—most importantly for my work and areas of research—illustrate how looking towards non-Western epistemologies can enrich the production of digital media by providing diverse ways of understanding craft and cultural circulation.

The idea is that all of my traveling and powwows and interviews over the past three years are theoretically going to turn into something beyond a lot of computer files and a few presentations. But today, Day 1, is a strange day.

I should be frantically trying to finish my syllabi, putting all of my meetings into my calendar, updating my website and planning DTC events (dtc=digital technology culture=a program i direct). But no, the only thing I am currently responsible for is writing/composing/designing this project. Which, if I put my all into it, could be a lot. But, my problem in life is that I tend to have 2 switches: on + off. And right now I have a strong desire for 'off.' This blog, then, is my hope to at least in some way chart what it is one does while on sabbatical, and to hold myself accountable for more than Days (omg Chloe came back today....did you see?).

So, what did I do today? I tried to get to the bottom of my inbox so I can stop caring about it (sitting at 50 right now, was 87 this morning). I swam 2500 yards. I ate lunch and watched Days of Our Lives. I went to the chiropractor. It helped. Amidst all of that, I started bringing my brain back to my project....thinking about what it is I need to do to get this thing done. I downloaded a bunch of articles from American Indian Quarterly on craft/art/materiality. I started to remember that I do, actually, quite like this project. So, I suppose, that is a beginning.

Now, I shall take the dog for a walk.