7 Comments

I love this! "Scholarship as Conversation" is part of the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). I also see your nod to "Research as Inquiry"! http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework

It's so true that we bring ourselves into any teaching opportunity, and that's totally based on where we are at in the moment. I appreciate this, and I'm going to share with colleagues! And thanks for the shout out <3

Expand full comment

Ha, I knew librarians were going to immediately dive in here; I came to mention the ACRL Framework too.

What struck me so much in the Alison LaCroix story is the fact that Ida mentions she didn't learn about scholarly dialogue in a class. As an undergraduate history/ethnic studies major I feel like the notion of counter-histories and scholarly dialogue ended up suffusing the curriculum--any discussion of history from below or subaltern studies has that embedded in it--and yet I can't recall there being a moment when someone told me "you know, knowledge is created through a long and ongoing conversation." This is why the ultimate hill I've realized I'll die on as an instructional librarian is trying to get professors to talk as much as possible about their disciplines *as* disciplines, to help students realize that knowledge is a collective creation, and a tentative, always-changing one too. I'm like, "okay, yes, absolutely teach content, but let's work on teaching metacontent too (and I'll help you, even!)."

Expand full comment

Yessss, thank you for this story! I think so often culture asks students to find "answers" and teachers to give the "answer". Whenever I can, I try to tell students that there are more questions than answers and huge knowledge gaps are also informed by power structures. It's a great hill to die on!

Expand full comment

Totally. As much as I've been preoccupied with the Authority frame and for years (I suppose now that I'm 40 I can almost say decades, plural) before that obsessed on and off about questions around power/knowledge, I think I've realized that it's the process of helping people to understand the existence of the scholarly conversation that may open the door the most to a greater understanding of power. Once you see that it's a conversation, then it's not a big jump to ask, well, who is defining the terms of this conversation, and why?

Expand full comment

Hi there! So glad that you both are engaging with what I've written (and happy to give you the shoutout, Nisha! :)) One of the things that I try to emphasize when I teach my courses is that we are all in dialogue with other scholars and that the field is ever-changing. I'm so glad that both of you as librarians are also invested in getting this more "meta" aspect of scholarship across! :)

Expand full comment

Hi Ida! This line you wrote caught my eye, “ And I would add to that that though much of our research is presented as being done alone in our little silos, we are actually in collaboration with each other, through space and time, engaging in years-long and decades-long conversations that should complicate and further our understandings of the past.”

I especially appreciate the part about how these conversations *should* complicate our understanding. I’m not an academic but a reader of research (and articles about research) and so often it seems like it’s being presented as “this research solves X”. Basically the goal is usually the opposite of complicating matters. But I think that misses the point, complications are how we move the conversation in interesting directions to hopefully impact change. Resisting complications could even be dangerous if we’re too locked in on a simple outcome that we ignore what is or could be.

OK, not sure if that makes sense. Hah. Thanks for sharing this newsletter! I always walk away with something to think about after reading tiny driver.

Expand full comment

Hi Devin! Thank you so much for this. Yes!! Conventions of the field definitely have us frame our studies as addressing x gap in the field, but I think that this also involves further nuancing and adding to the arguments that were made before us. So glad you enjoyed this one! :)

Expand full comment