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Conferences, Ravynn, Ravynn: Act 3, Ravynn: Act 3, Scene 2, Uncategorized

Scholarly Insurgency at “Fugitive Futures: Grad Students of Color Un-Settling the University”

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Scholarly insurgency is a way of life.

I don’t often think of what I do with this blog as “insurgency.” I do, however, think my work on Black Girl Does Grad School is urgent and necessary, which is how I came to “Fugitive Futures: Grad Students of Color Un-Settling the University.”

I saw the CFP circulating around Twitter and enough people forwarded it to me via e-mail, urging me to submit, that I decided to do it. The title alone was enough to draw me in. Fugitive Futures. Here was a group of young, up and coming scholars committed to reimagining the Academy as we know it. After attending “Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black” at the University of Maryland last semester, I knew that I needed to be a part of more—for lack of a better word—intentional spaces.

A note about conferences: I honestly don’t think I do conferencing “right.” I’ve yet to present at or even go to a national conference like the American Studies Association or the Modern Language Association conference. I haven’t even presented at many conferences at all—“Fugitive Futures” is only my second. Let’s remember this is my third year in grad school and only my second conference presentation. In the interest of transparency, I was feeling overworked and not very confident about my “research.” I didn’t believe I had anything to contribute, and the only thing I managed to do consistently throughout my three years in grad school was write my BGDGS posts. But then, as I’ve written about, “Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black” shifted my mindset. I started expanding my own conception of myself as a scholar and started to consider my digital work a scholarly intervention. The moment I stopped pigeon-holing myself as strictly a comics scholar, I started to blossom. After that, I realized I was ready to get back into the conference circuit, but I did wait until I was ready. It may not be the most solid advice, but it’s real.

“Fugitive Futures” marked a huge turn in my life. It marked the beginning of my second decade of life (I celebrated my 25th birthday the day before I boarded my plane to Austin). It marked my first real taste of total independence as it was my first solo journey to a place I’ve never been before. It marked the end of an academic dry spell. There was a lot riding on this trip, this conference, this presentation to be good—and I fortunately was not disappointed.

We kicked off the two day conference with a keynote by Saidiya Hartman. It was her book, Scenes of Subjection, that kept me from walking out of my Histories of Race class last year. Given her work is the epitome of scholarly insurgency, Hartman’s keynote was a perfect fit for the event. And while I could spend this entire post discussing her keynote alone, it is the graduate students and their fugitivity in their respective communities that I want to discuss. Presentations were wide ranging and conversations surrounding them were generative. I admired Carlisia McCord’s brutal honesty and her bravery in naming individual oppressors in her talk, “Can This Be Un-Settled: Why Not Just Flip the Table, and Burn it Down.” I heard from a group of doctoral students from UCLA speak about their collective efforts to organize for themselves in “’The Only Hope’: Black Doctoral Students Reclaiming Their Time.” Creative writers and Ph.D. students Maurine Ogbaa, Onyinye Ihezukwu, and Novuyo Rosa Tshuma gave illuminating talks on what it means to be African writers in “(Re)membering Africa: sneak[ing] into the university and steal[ing] what one can.” I was particularly taken with this talk because I had no idea one could get a Ph.D. Literature and Creative Writing and I will admit my mind was spinning wildly, wondering if I could do something like that. I have since come to my senses and am recommitted to my American Studies program. There were collaborative presentations and presentations from across the nation (and even a really cool student from Canada); presentations that made me laugh and made me cry, and both that made me consider what it means to have work that elicits such reactions and what a revolutionary act that is in and of itself.

When I’m in these sorts of spaces, I start to imagine what it would be like if we could coalition build with these people. As a digital humanities scholar, I’m always up for connecting via Twitter and apps like Slack. I think the digital can be a wonderfully generative place to imagine new futures. It is my hope that I will remain in contact with the people that we met this weekend, and that we will be active colleagues in helping each other navigate these spaces that were not designed for people like us to succeed.

If any of the organizers of “Fugitive Futures” are reading this, or even any of the wonderful people I met this weekend: Thank you. I see you. You can do this. You are appreciated.

We are the future, and the future looks insurgent.

Conferences, Ravynn, Ravynn: Act 3, Ravynn: Act 3, Scene 1, Research, Uncategorized

Making the Digital Physical: AADHum’s “Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black” Conference

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Following the opening session of University of Maryland’s African American History, Culture and Digital Humanities’ (AADHum) “Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black” conference on Friday, the first thing I did was run up for a hug from a young man named Nathan Dize. Nathan and I were strangers in real life; but we were also twitter friends. This process of linking up with people that I knew digitally IRL was a huge personal theme of this particular conference. Not only were we in community by virtue of our research interest, but many of us were connected virtually. While the content of this conference, which I’ll get to I promise, was incredible, a large part of the joy I derived from this experience came from the opportunity to be in physical proximity with the people that provide me with a large amount of my academic support. What does it mean to make the digital physical? Better yet, how does it feel to make the digital physical? For me, it feels like the best of me is being seen, supported and loved. Now, how many academic conferences can you say do that kind of affective labor?

I understand that it seems gauche to talk about love in an academic setting, but so much of my intellectual growth stems from Black women scholars at this conference who loved me simply for being a “Black girl [doing] grad school.” Black women scholars both on twitter and in the digital humanities have nurtured me; they have pushed me; they have included me. While enraptured by wonderful panels featuring Black women scholars, such as Always at Work: Black Women Online and Do It For the Culture: Black Humor and Narrative Strategies Online, I found that some of the best intellectual conversations I had with Black women scholars were by chance.

I ran into Dr. Gabrielle Foreman while trying to catch another panel and she talked to me about how she came up with the idea of project CVs, which emphasize collective work for digital humanities projects. Dr. Raven Maragh Lloyd told me about a conversation with her Uber driver on the way to the conference in which she was asked how the work she creates benefits the community. These innovations and questions should lead us to ask our own important questions: who are we serving and why? How can our relationships with community partners be mutually beneficial? How do we adequately represent the work we do on collaborative digital humanities projects? As Dr. Andre Brock and Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson pointed out in their keynote, we also need to be occupied with the banal and the joy that brings— so I point to these examples of everyday joy I experienced while being in an extraordinary, yet admittedly still ephemeral, space.

Though only a temporary space, it was constructed in such a way that everyone could feel included and cared for. From the pronouns on our badges and gender neutral bathrooms at the Riggs Center, to the lactation and quiet rooms, participants were cared for in a way which should be standard. Our humanity was acknowledged, respected and catered to. While I did not take advantage of many of these spaces, it was a comfort to know they were there should I have needed them. These touches (which were by no means “small”) helped effectively translate the communities of safety we have been building online into a physical space.

The lessons I learned while at #AADHum2018 will stay with me throughout my career as a scholar, especially as echoes of the conference will likely reverberate through tweets for months to come. I contended with Timeka N. Tounsel’s idea of “monetized resistance” as I work to reframe the way I think about my own blog for example. Tounsel argued that there’s work to be done in reframing the way Black women think about their digital labor— we should not cast it off as leisure, but acknowledge it for the intellectual intervention that it is. Grace Gipson’s presentation, “Exploring the Black Female in Comics Fandom through Digital Storytelling (Black Girl Nerds and Misty Knight’s Uninformed Afro)” gave me a colleague that discusses everything I’m interested in: fandom, aca-fans, Black girl nerds, superheroes, blogs and podcasts all rolled into one. I didn’t know it was possible to make sense of all of those things together, but then again Black women have always found ways to do the impossible. I’m still reeling from Marissa Parham’s incredible talk on the This Code Cracks: A #BlackCodeStudies Roundtable in which she had the audience consider what it would mean for a reader to remix an essay for oneself, amongst a number of other insanely evocative questions, all while dragging sections of her essay, “Break and Dance”, gifs and graphics around a remixable screen. Seeing these powerful Black women scholars captivating audiences with words and technical skill inspired me to walk in my own truth and power. My words are magic too, I just need to learn to harness their energy.

My primary focus on the Black women scholars at this conference throughout this piece stems from a lack of intellectual and emotional sanctuary and support at my own institution. Nevertheless, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the Black men that did not come to play. Dr. Julian Chambliss took time out of his day to talk with me, a budding comics scholar; Rashad Timmons had everybody retweeting quotes from his paper, “Hashtag Bodies, Hegemony and the Deadly Terrain of Civil Society”; and Dr. Andre Brock snatched everybody’s edges with his assertion that colored peoples’ time is a, “Joyous disregard for modernity and labor capitalism.” (He said what he said, y’all.)

In addition to the wonderful roundtables and panels that AADHum put together for participants, there were also digital poster and demo sessions. This was one of the many moments where I wished I could be in multiple places at once during the conference. I wanted to see all of the posters, but I also wanted to experience a demo, as I had never seen humanities people give poster presentations; nor had I seen a digital humanities demo in the way that AADHum had conceived of it. I intended to stop in at each poster for a few minutes, but during the first session I was so enthralled by Sherri William’s presentation, “Amplifying Black Voices Through Digital Journalism,” that before I knew it, a member of the AADHum team was letting participants know that the session was over. The posters provided an excellent alternative presentation format which encouraged both small group and one-on-one conversations around the presenter’s topic; which for someone like me, who is often too intimidated to ask questions in large group settings, was a perfect opportunity to engage with scholarship on a more personal level.

It was beautiful. It was wonderful. It was Black. It was digital. It was an honor to have been in community with so many wonderful thinkers. It was a thrill to watch my digital world transform from pixelated into reality.

Conferences, Projects, Ravynn, Ravynn: Act 2, Ravynn: Act 2, Scene 2, Uncategorized

Week 9, or the Lemon Symposium, March 16-17, 2018

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I love conferences. In fact, conferences are probably my favorite part of being an academic. However, it’s not just going to conferences that I like– it’s being a part of the university hosting them. I love welcoming people to my university who are here for intellectual conversations. It’s about the ideas that fly in a space other than a classroom setting and new people that give life to them. You have to admit, it can be tiring to throw around the same ideas with the same set of people. Conferences breathe new life into age old dilemmas, and you never know what the outcome of new conversations will be.

The most special thing about the Lemon Project, for me, is it’s commitment to the community. Community partners have always been welcomed to participate in the conversations we’re having at the College. So not only do I get a fresh set of intellectuals to meet and bond with but elders from my community to learn from as well.

Lemon Project Team: Sarah Thomas (Lemon Fellow), Jody Allen (Director), Ravynn Stringfield (Graduate Assistant)

Between the live tweeting, taking pictures, running the mic, directing people, and checking people in, it’s a miracle that I managed to find time to be in the moment and listen. There were two roundtables in particular that really stuck with me from the event. The first was “Desegregating Higher Education: Placing William & Mary in Historical Context,” which featured an array of people with whom I was honored to share a room: Lynn Briley and Janet Brown Strafer (two of the Legacy 3, the first residential African American students at William and Mary); Lillian Ashcroft-Easton (the first African American to receive a PhD in the History department); Michael Engs (an African American graduate of the class of ‘69); Sam Sadler (for whom the Sadler Center is named); and Ron Sims (an early African American professor and administrator in the 1980s). It struck me as they talked so eloquently about their experiences at the College that these were the people who had made it possible for me exist in this space. Thankfully, as Valarie Gray-Holmes would say, they left gate open for students like me. (Gray-Holmes is writer and performer of the one woman show, “The New Gatekeepers,” which was performed during the Lemon Symposium.)

The second roundtable that I have been mulling over was “Building the Legacy: Where Do We Go From Here?” It featured Jessica O’Brien (graduate of the College); Karen Ely (the last of the Legacy 3); Chon Glover (our Chief Diversity Officer); Sharron Gatling (a staff member in the Diversity office); and senior undergraduate student Taylor Jasper. The questions asked were difficult to answer and sometimes, for Glover especially, difficult to answer without personal investment and emotion getting in the way. They were asked questions like “What has W&M done to heal the racial divide?” and “What specifically should our next steps be when we look at issues of race and reconciliation?” The answers were varied. In terms of what William & Mary has done, chief among the responses was the implementation of the Task Force of Race and Race Relations and the hiring of a Chief Diversity Officer. When thinking about what the next steps would be it seemed that everyone agreed that we have to move beyond the ceremonial and the low-hanging fruit, which is to say, we need to do the heavy lifting now. What exactly “the heavy lifting” will look like is unclear, but I think it’s safe to say it’s going to require more than renaming buildings and a year long celebration of the 50th anniversary of residential African Americans.

Artist Steve Prince discussing his work “A Bessie Stitch: 1948”

In addition to the fruitful conversations, I was particularly moved by all of the art that we had infused in this little symposium. We kicked off the weekend with an artist talk by Steve Prince, who spoke of African diasporic funeral traditions through art. The dirge, he argued, is the slow, sad, emotionally evocative first line, and what we need to get to is what’s called the “Second Line,” the music which celebrates life and helps us heal and move forward. He peppered his talk with images from his own beautiful work and helped the audience see his message within them. Then he held an artist workshop to create a collaborative work celebrating Mr. Lemon, for whom our project is named. (I unfortunately did not attend.) Finally, we ended the day with Gray-Holmes play, “The New Gatekeepers,” which I found as moving as the piece she performed in August 2017 at the mural unveiling in Swem Library which kicked off the 50th celebration. Gray-Holmes told the story of a woman from the Tidewater area in 1959 who witnessed the integration of William & Mary, whose grandson who had dreams of going to college, and how integration looked across the changing landscape of our country.

Ravynn Stringfield with Professor Nikki Giovanni

Of course, no discussion of this year’s Lemon Symposium would be complete without discussing the incredible keynote by Professor Nikki Giovanni. Nikki Giovanni came to prominence during the 1960s and 1970s as a Black Arts Movement poet, thrilling readers with earthy but vibrant, compassionate yet revolutionary poetry. Yesterday, Giovanni celebrated the Lemon Project with us, spoke of the process by which Africans came to be enslaved and were carried to America, describing it as a process which involved no longer recognizing clouds and thus knowing this land would be different. This was the first time I had ever heard enslavement described in this way– only Nikki Giovanni could get me to consider clouds as a system of meaning. She performed her legendary poem “Ego Tripping” at the request of Professor Jacquelyn McLendon, explained her theories about outer space and finding new life out there, and also thrilled us all by explaining that she believed “everything used to be somebody someone loved.” She is a tiny human full of these incredible ideas that she believes in so fully that I find myself convinced that there is life on other planets and that my precious laurel wreath ring used to be someone’s beloved aunt.

This year’s Symposium was amazing. The conversations were impactful, there was amazing audience participation, the art was inspired, and I got to meet some truly incredible people. To think, this isn’t even a complete summary of every single thing that happened, because I’d have to write a short book to do that. But I wanted to take some time to reflect on the dialogue that I had the fortune to be a part of these last two days because the questions we asked were important and the answers to those questions? Critical. I’m not sure what my role is going to be moving forward, but at least I’m beginning to think about my own answers to the questions that were raised.