Praxis: Creating a Visual Research Statement
Top left in the building: Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel, Marianne Hirsch, Scott McCloud, Paul Fisher Davies, Pat Grant, Lydia Wysocki. On building to right, street art of Augusto Boal. Large mural on building to the right: queer auto ethnographers: Stacy Holman Jones, Dan Harris, Bryant Keith Alexander, Amber Johnson, Tony Adams, D.C. Hill, Durrel Callier, and Craig Gingrich-Philbrook. Amy Kilgard in street art next to Craig. Jen’s Joe as a coffee shop. CSUN performance ensemble on the far right. In the intersection, I do my yoyo ballet with Jade C. Huell, Jenn Erdely, Alex Davenport and Colin Whitworth. Listening of course to a lecture by Jonny Gray (Performance scholar and comics genius) all next to good ol’ Bernie.
Ah, the dreaded academic job search. You cull over hundreds of job calls from universities across the state to find that there are only 2-3 that really fit you, and by you I mean me. This story is actually about me. I hope, though, that it will make a few people brave enough to represent themselves honestly and artistically in the academic search.
So, pretty standard, the job call came through asking for a variety of documents from me: C.V., Teaching Philosophy, Diversity Statement, Research Statement etc. It was my first time having to create a separate document that articulated that agenda outside my cover letter. It made me anxious. I needed to find a way to translate the work I’ve done and plan on doing into a legible form that could be understood by the committee, but that also represented my work in a performative/arts-based way.
I began by typing, “My work is at the intersection of queer auto ethnography and arts-based research.” No, no… so trite. I tried to find another way in, to no avail. I thought. Ok. If I was making art for this call, trying to answer this question performatively, aesthetically, how would I do it? An intersection. That’s it! But which one?
Well, this job happened to be in Philadelphia, so I thought. Hey, wonder if they have a gayborhood. And… they sure did!
Perfect, I thought…. I can work with this! It’s beautiful. So I started sketching…
Next, a little color….
Next, the big mural. The scholars who have really touched my work and inspired me to be a brave, queer storyteller.
As a sidenote, I created each of these as an 8x10 individual portrait and sent them to the scholars as an homage and a thank you for their inspiration and work. I think it is very important to tell the people that inspire you that they do so. It makes this at times lonely academic world a little warmer.
Finally, I added in the practical makers who have taught me the mechanics, and the colleagues who have collaborated with me in this work. Once the image was complete. It was time for some textual narration.
Well, I can’t say whether or not I landed the job yet, but I am happy to report that the committee was amenable to this creative twist on a traditional text only research statement, and I did advance through two interviews with these materials.
I share this story in my blog, because I think that it is important for arts-based and performance scholars to be willing to represent our theory in praxis when possible and to take creative risks that show and tell about the work we do!
