School's In for Summer...
Over the past couple of days, I’ve been in contact again with the head of the American Culture Studies Department up at BGSU, with the intent of getting the wheels turning again so I can finish my doctorate. The department head, Don McQuarie (who’s smart as hell, almost comically laid-back, my former softball teammate, and a great guy to have your back) has essentially said that things can get underway easily enough again, despite having been away for two years. We’re going over the information and items that we need, the people I need to contact, and looking at an approximate timeline of 1.5 years, maybe a little more. I’m not deluding myself in the slightest…it’s going to be a lot of hard work again, complicated maybe only slightly by the fact that I no longer live in Bowling Green. No—right now the biggest challenge is to form a new committee, and determine the new direction the document will eventually take.
My original dissertation was going to deal with a migrant farmworker/labor rights organization out of Toledo called The Farm Labor Organizing Committee, or FLOC. Specifically, I was going to take a pedagogical approach to it and analyze how they build networks among supporting members and organizations—you know, looking at the methods and conveyance of information. Fun, right?
It was an approach that I was strong-armed into by my former dissertation chair. Her academic specialties lie in the area of critical pedagogy, and while it’s a good and fascinating field of study, I had envisioned doing more of a layman’s historiography of FLOC. Something readable and detailed—really trying to enmesh the reader into what the organization DOES. Kind of like gonzo journalism, at least to some extent, to really let people get the pulse of the agency and the people it serves. To my knowledge, something like this has only been done once before (by Barger and Reza—an awesome book), but their approach was sociologically-based. It’s not a dry read by any stretch—but different enough in tone from what I want to try to do now. That, and it was published 13 years ago, so there’s a lot of new stuff that has yet to be officially chronicled.
The other blessing I can enjoy with this (I hope) is the fact that I’ve been an active associate of FLOC for years now. Not as much over the past year, due to my former unemployment and subsequent relocation, but I’ve maintained my contacts up there, and my track record of service and help—modesty aside—speaks for itself. I want to try and give a from-the-trenches style of conveyance to the stories and events I’ll write about, and having been present for a decent amount of events, mostly minor, a few relatively big, is something that I want to use prominently. Clearly, it won’t be an objective piece of writing, but I’ve never claimed that it would be, even two years ago.
I’m a little nervous about going back to this—truth be told, I’ve thought, more than a few times, of just letting it be. Ultimately, the two things that made me finally get back on the horse were: (1) It’ll be good tool to have as I keep trying to re-establish my professional career (although with my luck, it probably won’t make a difference anyway J), and (2) It’ll be nice to stop having it hang over my head.
So wish me luck, I suppose…
My original dissertation was going to deal with a migrant farmworker/labor rights organization out of Toledo called The Farm Labor Organizing Committee, or FLOC. Specifically, I was going to take a pedagogical approach to it and analyze how they build networks among supporting members and organizations—you know, looking at the methods and conveyance of information. Fun, right?
It was an approach that I was strong-armed into by my former dissertation chair. Her academic specialties lie in the area of critical pedagogy, and while it’s a good and fascinating field of study, I had envisioned doing more of a layman’s historiography of FLOC. Something readable and detailed—really trying to enmesh the reader into what the organization DOES. Kind of like gonzo journalism, at least to some extent, to really let people get the pulse of the agency and the people it serves. To my knowledge, something like this has only been done once before (by Barger and Reza—an awesome book), but their approach was sociologically-based. It’s not a dry read by any stretch—but different enough in tone from what I want to try to do now. That, and it was published 13 years ago, so there’s a lot of new stuff that has yet to be officially chronicled.
The other blessing I can enjoy with this (I hope) is the fact that I’ve been an active associate of FLOC for years now. Not as much over the past year, due to my former unemployment and subsequent relocation, but I’ve maintained my contacts up there, and my track record of service and help—modesty aside—speaks for itself. I want to try and give a from-the-trenches style of conveyance to the stories and events I’ll write about, and having been present for a decent amount of events, mostly minor, a few relatively big, is something that I want to use prominently. Clearly, it won’t be an objective piece of writing, but I’ve never claimed that it would be, even two years ago.
I’m a little nervous about going back to this—truth be told, I’ve thought, more than a few times, of just letting it be. Ultimately, the two things that made me finally get back on the horse were: (1) It’ll be good tool to have as I keep trying to re-establish my professional career (although with my luck, it probably won’t make a difference anyway J), and (2) It’ll be nice to stop having it hang over my head.
So wish me luck, I suppose…
posted by Reggae Joe at
9:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home