Crafting Homeplace in the Academic Borderlands

Increasingly, faculty with intersectional perspectives are challenging many aspects of higher education and urging a radical reimagination of the institution itself. This volume explores the successful strategies and contradictions of working within, against, and beyond a university with the goal of creating a humanizing educational experience for students and faculty alike. Providing a glimpse of what is possible, chapter authors describe their efforts to build alternative core curricula, research apprenticeships, community partnerships, ways of interacting with one another, and models of leadership. They reimagine academic milestones and processes like hiring, tenure and promotion, faculty support, research, funding, publishing, collaboration, and more. Each essay details the institutional structures and supports that were effective at improving academic work in teaching and research contexts. Crafting Homeplace in the Academic Borderlands is a much-needed examination of what it means to create a homeplace in academia where humanization is practiced as the foundation for a new way to teach, learn, know, and be in relationships.

Book Features:

• Demonstrates what scholar practitioners can accomplish when working together to collectivize their practice in the academy.
• Shares stories of scholar practitioners working across P–20 formal and informal educational and youth development spaces to humanize praxis in community work, research, teaching, activism, and leadership.
• Unearths contradictions and tensions that manifest among institutional demands, community needs, and the crisis around us.
• Provides a case study of transforming one institution of higher education to support faculty with diverse cultures and identities.

David Philoxene is an assistant professor of teacher education and faculty affiliate in the Center for Humanizing Education and Research. Danfeng Soto-Vigil Koon is co-director of the Transformative School Leadership Program and associate professor of leadership studies. Emma Haydée Fuentes is department chair and professor of international and multicultural education. All are at the University of San Francisco’s School of Education.

“In a time of great tumult and uncertainty, the editors have compiled a meditation on the necessity of always (re)turning home. In the face of the daily violence of the academy, their charge is one that cannot be overlooked in these moments of permanent distraction.”
—David Stovall, professor, University of Illinois Chicago

“The master’s house is not a home, yet perhaps you find yourself in it, in academia. Let Crafting Homeplace be your escape guide from academic Stockholm syndrome. In these pages are practice-full methods for teachers, researchers, faculty, and deans to cultivate impactful, ethical, and loving collaborations within and beyond the university.”
—K. Wayne Yang, professor and provost, John Muir College

Contents

Foreword Margo Okazawa-Rey  vii

Introduction: Theoretical Roots and Placemaking  1
Danfeng Soto-Vigil Koon, David Philoxene, and Emma Haydée Fuentes

Part I: Crafting Homeplace

1.  Homeplace Storytelling: Theorizing for and From Home  19
Melissa Canlas and Emma Haydée Fuentes

2.  Epistemic Collaging and Homemade Methodologies for Educational Research  35
David Donahue, Johanna Estrella, Jean Pierre Ndagijimana, Eghosa Obaizamomwan-Hamilton, and Patricia Rojas-Zambrano

Part II: Building Institutions Anew

3.  Project HEAL: Humanizing Educators and Learners  59
Ruchi Agarwal-Rangnath and Farima Pour-Khorshid

4.  Challenging Academic Feudalism Through Humanizing Graduate Research Apprenticeship  79
Danfeng Soto-Vigil Koon, Bianca N. Haro, Seenae Chong, and Cecelia Jordan

Part III: SEEDING Home

5.  “To Transform and Be Transformed”: Testimonios of Humanizing Praxis and a Community-Engaged Care  101
Belinda Arriaga-Hernandez, Rosa M. Jimenez, and Jane Bleasdale with Patricia Ramirez and Zenón Barron

6.  ¡DALE! Organizing for Educational Justice and Liberation  123
Daniela G. Domínguez

Part IV: Fighting for and Tending Homeplace

7.  Collectivizing Toward Transformation: A Genealogy of Place  137
Patrick Camangian and Susan Katz

8.  Beyond Survivance: Building a Collective Grounded in Humanizing Relationality  153
Monisha Bajaj and Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales

9.  Reflections on Leadership as an Act of Love: Letters From the Dean  169
Shabnam Koirala-Azad

Conclusion: The Journey of Crafting Homeplace  183
David Philoxene, Danfeng Soto-Vigil Koon, and Emma Haydée Fuentes

Endnotes  193

References  195

Index  211

About the Editors and Contributors  219