Alt-Scholarship

Affirmative

It is all about the yes-and. Too much scholarship is based on arguing against the ideas of others. What if there are other possibilities that we overlook?
Speculative

When we know in advance our questions and conclusions, we reinscribe rather than reinvent knowledge. Can scholarship itself become emergent and open-ended?
Embodied

We lose something when we cordone scholarship off to intellectual realms only. Emotion, performative modes, and physical response can open channels for scholarship.
Material

Engaging with the material world has long been a part of scholarship. What happens when we forground the material aspects of composing as we theorize?

Yes and Yes-and: Time in the Compshop

Scholarship in the humanities is far too combative. A typical move is to review what has been said by others, and then to lay out problems with their analysis, evidence, or conclusions--a refutational mode captured by the phrase yes, but.

But what if we take an approach borrowed from improvisation, the directive to accept and extend the ideas of others? This piece imagines some of those possibilities by composing with affirmation. Writing without ever using the phrase however is harder than it seems. And rewarding.

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Moonmoth (Recast from the poem by Elizabeth Bishop)

It's a moving thing

With a leaf for a wing

It's a moon moth

It's the silhouette

You make when you get

Near the sky

It's the ceaseless track

That keeps bringing you back

To the night

It's another year every year

And you never hear

Anyone cry

It's the place that you stand

With your hat in your hand

In the light

It’s a single tear

And it’s crystal clear

As it longs to escape from your eye

And you turn 17

And you turn 59

And you turn and you turn

And you try

It's another year every year

And you never hear

Anyone cry

It’s a scene from a dream

And it floats through your screen

It’s a moon moth

It’s the way you return

To the lesson you learn

In goodbye

It's the endless scrawl

When you’re crawling the wall

To get high

It's another year every year

And you never hear

Anyone cry

Trainsplaining

One possibility for opening avenues for new modes of scholarship is multimedia. Sound, for instance, has a material dimension that differs from text on a page. As we process waves of sound, meaning becomes embodied. This piece explores the role of affect on our understandings. Music, the sounds of owls, and trains passing pursuade us that, as we move into emotional registers, the body and sensation become key elements of scholarship.

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Speculation & Ambiguity

Contemporary theories of knowledge express concern over approaches that know in advance the outcome of their investigations. Ideas and the world take shape in ways that are networked, emergent, and ephemeral. How can we pursue scholarship that is similarly open ended? And what happens to notions of certainty that are typically yoked to academic investigations? Can the scholarship we produce participate in the same rich possibilities we associate with the creative texts we study? What happens when we compose with the aim of deploying ambiguity and moving from concrete to abstract claims?

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