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Dissertation, Ravynn, Ravynn: Act 5, Ravynn: Act 5, Scene 1, The Journey, Uncategorized, writing

Dissertation Check-In #4: The Council of Superfriends

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My usually carefully planned out, weekly grad school blog has fallen woefully to the wayside since March. All things considered, it’s to be expected. Aside from the pandemic and uprisings and the impending election, it’s already difficult to write a dissertation and to sustain other writing projects while doing so.

So Black Girl Does Grad School has taken a backseat this year.

Nevertheless, I’m still here—albeit sporadically.

I’m currently in the editing phase of dissertation writing. I got the bare bones of what I’m trying to do and say down on the page, and now it’s about tweaking and adding and reading more and fleshing out the ideas that I already have.

Sounds simple. Unfortunately, at least for me, it’s not.

Editing is actually the hardest part of writing for me. I think it’s the most valuable part. Much of the diamonds of your thoughts are excavated during editing. The push and pull of working and reworking your writing feels a lot like kneading dough. It’s hard, intense work that requires you to get your hands dirty, and do what looks more or less like destroying your hard work. But if you don’t knead— and importantly, if you don’t let your work sit, or prove, to extend the metaphor— you won’t have much worth showing at the end. It’ll be an underdeveloped bit of mess.

As much as I respect this part of the process, I find it really difficult to do on my own, and with my own writing. Even with feedback from my chair, I still feel rather alone in this journey. The loneliness also stems from writing this particular project about Black girls and fantasy and the digital without having a Black woman on my committee.

Yes, I am aware of how this looks. The truth of it is, when I entered grad school, I knew nothing of the politics of crafting a committee. This was information I learned on the fly. And at that time, a committee didn’t matter much to me, because four or five years ago, when I was applying and starting out, I didn’t know this was the project I wanted. Perhaps a little foresight might have directed me to a different program, with a different set of support systems in place, specifically the hand of Black women scholars.

But I just wasn’t thinking like that yet.

Now I am thinking about these things as I write this creative and genre defying manuscript, knowing in my heart of hearts, that in all likelihood my committee’s not going to get it.

And having to defend my project, and by extension, myself in the process, was enough to paralyze me going forward into edits. I needed to talk to people who would understand, with little to no explanation the why of what I was trying to do as well as the what and how.

So I called a meeting of the Council of Superfriends.

My Council of Superfriends is a collection of Black women I love and who love me from different parts of my life, who all think about Black girls and girlhood in various ways: there’s Dr. Autumn, Black girl literacy scholar and one of my dearest internet friends; Chardé, an anthropology Ph.D. student at my university; Taylor, a theatre artist I met doing Black Monologues at the University of Virginia; and, of course, my filmmaking soul sister, Micah.

I asked them for an hour of their time, to just listen to me try to articulate my project as it exists so far, and offer feedback, suggestions and questions. And as soon as we started, I knew calling this particular group of thinkers together was just what my project needed. More than I needed to be pushed and prodded in my thinking, I needed community. I needed Black women who could show me where the bounds of my own mind were with love and care. They were able to ask the hard questions, and the ones that matter most: if this is a project about the freest manifestation(s) of Black girls’ selfhood, why are you limiting yourself to what you think a dissertation has to look like? Would you even be writing a dissertation to answer this question? Can a dissertation, the way you imagine it, answer this question to your satisfaction? Why did you choose this form? If you’re not planning to stay in academia, why does it matter so much to do this in such a constricting way?

For a project about the potential of limitlessness, I realized I was trapped on every side by everyone else’s expectations. The reason I was feeling so paralyzed by the project was because I couldn’t even imagine what true intellectual freedom would mean and look like for myself under the system that currently exists. And that was the trap. I was trying to fly in a cage. Just because I made the cage bigger so I couldn’t always see the bars, didn’t mean they weren’t still there.

Over the years, I have gotten so good at doing what I want to do inside the lines, inside the cage, that I haven’t truly dared let myself imagine what exploding the lines completely would look like for me. Sure, it’s impressive to be able to do this sort of alchemy within, but that’s not the truest form of my self-expression.

I can’t lie to myself and also do this project.

What a waste. Of time, of energy.

If I’m doing this for who I say I’m doing this for, and if I’m truly doing what I want to do, there is no more trying to fly in the cage.

And in conversation with the Superfriends, Chardé brought up a good point: this is a Hurstonian project. I am a student of Zora Neale Hurston. I am not, nor have I ever been, the only Black woman to find the constraints of the academy and the way things have “always been done,” completely misaligned with my personal mission. I have people I can return to, whose work I can think through and build on, to craft something to ultimately matters to me.

We began the meeting sort of discussing the long standing irritation I have at having to “justify” my dissertation work. I shouldn’t have to explain why my work about Black girls matters: to question that is to question the essential importance of Black girls. And though I didn’t necessarily come to this conclusion in that hour, I did begin to realize that the first step in freeing myself to do this project justice is to stop answering that question. Stop wasting breath on people who need to be taught that Black girls’ lives matter.

It’s time to focus on the questions that do matter, and the people who are asking them.

The Superfriends reminded me who I’m doing this for, and why I’m doing it.

They reminded me that I still have a lot to learn and unlearn and relearn, and that this process is for me. Perhaps this isn’t why other people pursue Ph.D.s, but my project is a labor of love and care.

And it always will be.

Intermission 4, The Journey, Uncategorized, writing

Requiem For The King

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Chadwick Boseman joined the ancestors on the evening of August 28th. It was revealed that he had been diagnosed with stage three colon cancer four years ago, which progressed to stage four, and eventually took him.

Boseman rightfully deserves the most beautiful of elegies, ones that paint a stunning portrait of how impactful his corpus of work has been. As my good friend Kelsey said as we mourned together, Boseman’s artistry bridged past, present and future in a way that was impossible and necessary. He deserves words that reflect this. I, most certainly, am not the one to give it. I didn’t know him.

But I knew Black Panther.

Professor Claudrena Harold introduced me to Black Panther, in a circuitous way. We were having lunch together early in my last year of college, plotting my journey to graduate school, when she asked, “Did you know Ta-Nehisi Coates is writing the new Black Panther comics?”

Professor Harold is not the kind of person from whom you can hide your ignorance; so I owned up to being unaware, and the side eye I received was enough to send me home ready to do a thorough Google search. Fast forward a few months and I had read (and fallen in love with) Between the World and Me, become a Coates stan and was reading old Atlantic articles in my spare time, and was eagerly awaiting the first issue of the new Black Panther.

When the first issue landed in my Comixology account in late spring 2016, I turned the lights off in my dorm room and read the issue under my covers. I wanted as few distractions as possible as I drank in this comic. I emerged with a new obsession, which was only intensified by the announcement of the forthcoming movie that summer.

The film connected the work I was doing at the time as a comics scholar with the work my good friend, Micah, was doing as a film scholar, both of us interested in stories where Black people were centered in the ways we saw ourselves but that white media could not imagine. We both had questions, some answers, a lot of thoughts about what this film could mean, could do, could represent, and we both brought a particular expertise to the conversation. We founded King of the Black Millennials, a short lived blog where we worked out those early thoughts that summer, an endeavor that solidified our relationship as writing collaborators as well as friends.

I entered graduate school in fall 2016 with no sense of what I was doing or wanted to do; in some ways, I came armed with only my love of comics, and specifically, in that moment, Black Panther. So I clung to that. My first graduate level research paper for my Popular Culture class was rather mediocre, but I saw the beginnings of a real project forming. That paper led to my first conference presentation at the Southeastern American Studies Association conference in spring 2017; my first archival trip to work with Black Panther comics at VCU that summer, which became the basis of my Master’s portfolio that I defended that fall.

All that said, it must come as no surprise that the closer the film came, my eagerness grew. I planned out my outfits for opening night months before and secured my ticket for opening night the day they were available. To most of my friends’ surprise, I was firm in my resolve to see the film just once by myself before I saw it with anyone else. They thought it was because I feared I might have criticism; I knew it was because I would sob through the entire film.

When Wakanda unfurled before my eyes for the very first time on screen, I wept.

Perhaps white men had created Wakanda, but Black people had reclaimed it and cultivated this.

In the months after I defended my Master’s thesis, I regularly told my people I was going to take the Master’s and leave. I was uninspired and burnt out. I felt harassed and often patronized in my classes. I didn’t have another plan, but a few days after I had decided I was going to leave my program, a classmate sent me an email. Attached as an article about a Black man who had illustrated Black Panther comics in the 1970s: Billy Graham. Interested, but still unenthused and unwilling to do more research, I clicked it away.

By the grace of God, that classmate brought up the email again in class and directed my attention to the granddaughter mentioned in the article, Shawnna, who currently had Graham’s archives at her home in Williamsburg.

Meeting Shawnna and getting to work in the archives with her for a short while was enough to sustain me for another few months. I never did anything with that research other than write a seminar paper, but I realized after a while, that perhaps that work was simply meant to pull me through. It sustained me. It was what I needed to be okay.

When I first stumbled across the Associated Press article announcing Boseman’s death, I, like most people, thought it was a cruel hoax. It took less than a minute for me to confirm, and moments after that to completely break down. I cried for an hour straight, my heart broken over someone I had never met.

I woke today with a deep sadness settling over me like a weighted blanket. It took most of the day, and mourning with friends, to come close to articulating what losing Chadwick Boseman meant in this moment.

He was our joy. Our superhero. Our king.

Criticisms of the film still stand, but the way Black Panther became a cultural phenomena is unmatched. I had never seen such collective Black joy until the week of the release of Black Panther. It was a reason to celebrate, whether you liked superhero movies or not.

And, boy, did we celebrate.

The specter of Death looms over Black people in a particular way. Our health worries do not only include Coronavirus in this moment, but police violence, domestic abuse, assault, inadequate health care as a result of so many interconnected factors.

Tragedy has come to call again and again and again; its presence is unwelcome, yet it lingers.

We started the year with the loss of a legend, Kobe Bryant, and every day since has been another crisis, another loss, yet another moment that calls for mourning.

But this hit different.

Days after the Jacob Blake shooting, we lost a man who we came to associate with the purest form of Black joy.

It seemed pointed and cruel to lose a King of Joy in a moment that desperately called for any bit of hope.

Chadwick Boseman deserves the most peaceful rest.

To the King.

Coursework, Dissertation, Intermission 4, Mental Health, Personal Essays, prospectus, Ravynn, Readings, Research, Teaching, The Journey, Uncategorized, writing

Four Years, Four Lessons

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Today, August 8, 2020, marks the four year anniversary of Black Girl Does Grad School!

 

On this day in 2016, I published my first post, hopefully entitled, “Ravynn Stringfield, (Someday) Ph.D.” I wrote it the morning before I was due to start my first day of training to become an Omohundro editorial apprentice, my first graduate assistantship. From there, I would go on to become the assistant for the Lemon Project, a position I held, and loved, for two years. I left Lemon to serve as a teaching assistant for a film and modernization class and this coming year I will finally get to teach my own 290 course on Black girls and fantasy.

Two weeks after I wrote that initial post and a couple about Omohundro training, I would attend my first grad class. Over the course of two and a half years, I would take fourteen classes: six courses which counted towards my master’s degree (which I graduated with in 2018) and eight that went towards my Ph.D. There were some really fun ones: I loved my Digital Humanities class and Critical Race Theory; I lived for Interracialism and the comics class that I, and a couple of my classmates, begged my advisor to teach. And some were…let’s say, challenging– and not because of the academic rigor.

I’ve come a long way since the first time I used the term “digital humanities” to describe my work in a blog post: from denying what I did counted as DH to taking my first DH class to being wrapped up in a cocoon of love by Black digital humanists at “Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black.” Then from my first DHSI to consistently proclaiming my identity as a digital human(ist) by showcasing it in my bio and wearing a hashtag on a chain around my neck (Left).

I’ve also come a long way since coursework. Since I finished my last semester in December 2018, I spent a semester reading for comps, I took the exams, defended my prospectus and began writing my dissertation in earnest.

I’m now in my last stretch of grad school, a stretch that could admittedly take a while to get through, but I have faith that everything will work out okay. Four years ago, writing a dissertation was the last thing on my mind as I struggled to figure out how to read at the graduate level, manage my time, and find ways to infuse my work with my own signature flair. But, as I said so long ago:

“But never mind how I got here; the point is, now I’m here.”

So in honor of my four years in graduate school and my four years of this blog, I decided I wanted to share with you four lessons I’ve learned since August 2016:

 

  1. You can chase clout if you want to, but I’d much rather work with someone who cares about me and has my best interests at heart. Picking an advisor is one of the most difficult parts about graduate school. In my early days, I switched about three times, only to land with exactly who they suggested for me to start with. As it turns out, I wasn’t ready to work with her in the early days; but as I matured and figured out who I wanted to be as a scholar, writer and person, I realized I wanted someone who would respect my work as both scholarship and art. Someone who would help me protect my work and find the right homes for it. I found an advocate, and I’m extraordinarily lucky, because some people don’t.
  2. Find your people. And accept that sometimes your people may not be in your program or even at your institution. I have a few folks that I can turn to from my university, but for the most part, when I have graduate school related concerns or need support, I trot to my digital network of peers I have developed over time on Twitter. (Shout out to the Digital Dreamgirls, Allante, Joy and Autumn + so many more.)
  3. Know your audience. Ultimately this advice has saved me so much heartache and grief. The moment I disavowed myself from the notion that my writing had to be all things to all people, I became free. Knowing who you’re writing for, the folks you’d like to serve, can help you focus your work and questions, and also helps you tune out voices who don’t understand what you’re trying to do.
  4. Grad school may be a big part of your life, but it’s not your whole life. You have a whole identity, full of parts who aren’t served or fulfilled by what you do in the classroom or in your research. Make sure you’re tending to those parts of yourself by doing whatever you need to do to feel full. For me, it was yoga, making art, spending time with my family and dog and continuing to write across genres.

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To all those who have been on this journey with me thus far, thank you.

To all those about to begin their journey, good luck.

And to all: be well.