In triangulating the data collected, I also compared and analyzed findings from the narratives of Milan, Tyler and Nicole in order to offer a myriad of stories on place-‐
enactment from the Buildings-‐Landscapes-‐Cultures Field School. I investigated how and why their viewpoints differed from one another. This strategy of comparative narrative analysis is suggested by Riessman (2008) in her narrative methods. This strategy allowed me to see that by contrasting viewpoints on the issues of race, coming to know,
community engagement, fostering relations between institutions and community, and negotiating multiple, personal realities or truths, I was able to critically understand the richness and complexity of one voice in relation to another and draw forth the strategy of comparative narrative analysis.
What follows is my story of how research at the Buildings-‐Landscapes-‐Cultures Field School gave me a new perspective and propelled my own, more in-‐depth critical awareness in learning and in-‐lived experience. Following the learning moments of students, such as Nicole and Milan; for me became a story of coming to know through
“learning in place”. The photo documentation of my observations of the students is a culmination of my story as an educator and researcher grappling with these new perspectives. Here is A Collection of Narratives from the 2014 BLC Field School.
(http://prezi.com/d8qr6fw_lv6-‐
/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share).
Milan’s, Nicole’s and Tyler’s stories speak of a university-‐level immersion experience-‐an intense, all-‐day research experience-‐that put them in position to negotiate people and their community, spaces and its artifacts, and their stance in relation to all this. In the case of Milan and Nicole, such engagement had a profound effect on their awareness for their own previous knowledge, how they had viewed the world, how those perspectives changed, and how they wished to look at the social constructions of particular communities going forward; whereas, Tyler seeks an affirmation of his pre-‐existing biases and assumptions.
In Chapter 1, I spoke of my past summer spent in San Jose, Guatemala. For me, this was my immersion experience. Up to that point in my life, I had been part of more than one academic study abroad program. I welcomed such travel experiences with thrill and anticipation, though I realize now they never had a profound impact on my social views of the world in which I lived. It was in Guatemala, where I began to question the ground on which I stood. It was there I encountered great difference in race,
ethnicity, and socio-‐economic status of the people that I lived among for a summer. I began to feel this acute awareness of negotiating difference in relation to place. I thought of them as the Other upon my arrival. I felt that I did not know how to relate to them. I felt that they were someone less than I. I was there to lean on my white,
American privilege and offer it up as hope or help. I knew better. Under the guidance of a friend and mentor, I let go my preconceived notions and I began to get to know the people of San Jose and their ways. I discovered their lives were rich with meaning, spirituality, and family values. These experiences had fundamentally changed the way I
looked at, thought about people of a different race, class, or culture than my own. I questioned my biases and assumptions to the point of a deep depression. At first, when I returned, my experiences in Guatemala appeared to be isolated and far removed from my everyday life. But the memory of experience followed me home and it took some time to address and to unearth my own limitations and racist viewpoints. I did not know how to go on, quite frankly-‐ how my changed perceptions might be incorporated into my everyday existence. And as I stated early, I was eventually propelled to go back to school for a Masters in Art Education and I also began teaching art in a community-‐
based setting. I will expand more upon my teaching experiences later, but for the moment I believe it is important to focus on a realization that I never fully unpackaged and understood my own biases of “home”, Milwaukee, until my research and
participation in the Field School.
Similar to the narratives of Milan and Nicole, my narrative arises from a perspective of a local, someone born and raised in this greater metropolitan area. I carried with me little to almost no contact with Milwaukee neighborhoods such as Washington Park until high school and my undergraduate career. My assumptions and fears were not rooted in early childhood, but from a time later in life; and different from Nicole, where she was an insider to the immediate surrounding neighborhoods of Washington Park. I am a complete outsider from that regard. I was born in a very different, suburban area of greater-‐metropolitan Milwaukee. In my own experience with the Field School, I was given the opportunity to come to know the residents of Washington Park along side the students. All this being said, there was one moment in
the Field School that ruptured all thoughts that I had of my own handle on social and cultural biases.
On June 17, 2014, I parked my car down the street from the Amaranth Café. The group of three waits for me at the entrance. The day before, I agreed to meet Tyler and Blake here and shadow their group on this interview. It worked into my schedule, and I was mostly sitting in on this particular interview for the benefit of observing the group’s working dynamics. A student from the Peck School of the Arts theater department also would be shadowing the interview. I joined up with the group and we walked to the home of the gentleman that we would be interviewing. The two guys chatter about their first interview that same morning. I half listen as they recap their recordings, but my mind is filled with a hazy anticipation. We arrive and walk up the porch steps. This is the same house that I arrived to on the very first day of the Field School; however, this time we go to the second front door of the duplex. Tim, one of the residents of Washington Park who was to be interviewed after his home was measured, comes to open the door and opens it for us. We walk inside and the living room is dark. The shades on the window are mostly closed though it is sunny outside. My eyes take a moment to adjust, and when they do, they settle on a room that contains a sofa and two recliners arranged around a coffee table. I have been here in the previous week, as a few of the students were measuring the home, but I arrived through the back door and spent most of the time in the kitchen. I did not venture into this room of the house until today. Three of us sit on the couch. Tyler and
Tim each take a seat across from each other on the two recliners. Tyler begins preparing the interview equipment and papers hastily, and the rest of us make small talk. Tyler unceremoniously begins describing the microphone and talking about the release forms that Tim needs to sign. Tim looks apprehensive and he asks Tyler for a better sense of what the interview will be about. Tyler explains in a matter-‐of-‐fact tone, to acquire people’s experiences and new understandings of Washington Park instead of relying on assumptions about the neighborhood. At this point, I am completely consumed by the matter-‐of-‐fact tone in Tyler’s voice and how he fumbles with the equipment. At one point, I remember thinking that the interview would be a disaster. Why did I choose to come here again? Maybe I should sneak out and find another interview to join. I am distracted by the
mechanics and technicalities of the situation as we settle in. And then Tyler asks the first question, “Can you tell me about the Washington Park of your youth”?
Tyler’s disposition completely changes from moments ago. A minute prior, it was as if he was working behind the scenes to stage the interview. He went about his business forgetting that he already had an audience who was anticipating the interview. The moment the microphone flipped on, Tyler relaxes, and his head tilts to the side and his eyes soften. They meet Tim’s eyes with an intense focus.
Now, Tyler is playing the part of a completely different performance. He is well versed and slow to thought and speech.
These moments leading up to the interview remind me of the different roles that people are able to morph in and out of in the course of their day-‐to-‐day lives. For Tyler, he
appeared detached from the moment before the interview began, as he prepared the equipment. The moment the microphone turned on, he was projecting a performance of genuine sincerity and interest in Tim as the interviewee. I think of Milan, how she engaged with me as a researcher, why she chose to dismiss a dialogue on her own race in relation to her narrative. Judith Butler (1997) reminds us of where the theory of performativity originated and what it means, “[the] theory of performativity was
originally a theory of gender, about how gender is performed, how gender is enunciated and articulated and how it's done in relationship to certain kinds of norms” (p. 187).
Performativity, has to do with becoming someone or something for your audience, where there are norms and one has to negotiate them, either through replicating them and resignifying them or by crossing them or confusing them, or vacating them, or posing them many different relations (Butler, 1997). As I listened to Tim tell his story, and revisit his words again and again, I reflect on this notion of performativity and in relation to partial telling of narratives.
I may never be witness to or come to know his whole narrative. I can never see the world through his eyes and his experiences, and realizing that there are partial narratives that some people, social groups or cultures have and ones we may never know, but that are necessary to human survival, is a condition to embrace and use as an opportunity to build a kind of social and educational interdependency (Ellsworth, 1989).
That interdependency was a part of my Field School narrative, a type of relationship that recognized differences and partialities in the enactments-‐as-‐partial-‐performances of
place. Here is an excerpt from Tim’s story, what I took with me that day, as it particularly resonated within me.
Tim begins his story of Washington Park when he was a young boy. Tim paints a bleak picture of Washington Park, one riddled with crime and robbery. However, he has some fond memories of congregating near the basketball courts as a youth. It was the game of basketball that gave young boys of the neighborhood moments of drive, purpose, and brotherhood. He explains that basketball kept the boys off the streets, kept them from drugs, and kept them from getting into trouble. As he grew into his teenage years and beyond, he became involved with a gang that had a well-‐known presence and reputation in the Washington Park neighborhood. Tim was in and out of jail a couple of times for minor offenses. The story of his time with the gang crescendos to a climax and one life-‐changing night. The group was planning a robbery and for whatever reason, Tim decided that he would stay behind and not participate in this one job. Since the gang usually gathered outside of the Amaranth Café, the police were aware of this and had the gang under surveillance. The group members of the gang that went out that night were confronted and arrested on many charges. Tim was not one of them. He stopped participating in the gang’s activities and eventually the gang was disbanded.
Tim now works as a youth career development counselor. He advocates for the importance of reinstating more places in the neighborhood for youth, especially boys, to informally gather and play. He believes that more formal