19 Apr Being/Becoming an Activist/Scholar
Being/Becoming an Activist Scholar:
Lessons From Cultural-Historical Activity Research
This past week I participated in a symposium at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference held in NYC, along with two distinguished co-presenters, Kris Guitierrez and Anna Stetsenko. A diverse group of younger scholars served as interviewers, with many in the audience of about fifty jumping in right away.
Kris
Anna
Here’s how the event was framed:
Socio-cultural theory was born of activism. It emerged in the early, most improvisational moments of the Russian Revolution, and one of its continuing provocations is that it does not claim to be objective or apolitical. It is now over a hundred years since that revolution, and we are also living in a moment of upheaval and rapid change. In this invited symposium, we will hear from Kris Gutierrez, Lois Holzman, and Anna Stetsenko—three scholars who each have each spent decades working with socio-cultural theory at the intersection of activism and research. They will share their experiences and understanding of being activist scholars. Then a panel of emerging scholar activists will collectively interview and respond to the presentations and lead a discussion with the audience.
I titled my presentation “Research-Activism as Tool-and-Result,” and it began, “My experience as the particular kind of activist scholar that I am is joyful, creative and immensely gratifying. For me, being an activist scholar is the performance of my lifetime. It’s a performance that is collectively organized, improvisational in the movement of history and improvised in the day to day as well, although sometimes it involves improvising with a script.” Click here to read the entirety.
No Power Point for me!
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