J O U R N A L

Notes, Updates, & Reflections

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A collection of notes, project updates, photographs, and reflections on my academic journey. This space also highlights articles, books, and ideas that I have found impactful for myself and others.

Speculative Relations

Joseph M. Pierce, Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair

After holding Speculative Relations on my shelf for a few months, I was finally able to read though this invigorating text by Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee Nation). This book foregrounds relationality, speculation, and Indigenous ways of being and thinking. Rather than considering Indigenous art, culture, knowledge, and bodies as entities and objects of study, Pierce discusses the relationships, reciprocity, and kinship that reflect Indigeneity and care for the human and more-than-human world. The chapters, which combine theoretical and analytical readings with stories and memories, describe resistance and persistence through photography, literature, film, and more. Through speculative imaginings of the future, Pierce embodies relational views of his own life and empowers readers to think about their own communities' forms of expression. The author's epilogue of "if/then" statements tells a story of relationships woven together, that without one, the next cannot happen. But, if we think, if we do, if we are, then we can.

"If it is a dream of speculative relations, then our relations, kinetic and kaleidoscopic, emergent and cosmic, are the hope for a future."

Thoughts on Art and Object-Based Learning

Students come alive when they interact with art and material culture. From visiting museum or gallery spaces to tactile object-based learning, students benefit from engaging with art. As a doctoral candidate teaching a course about museums, my class spent time with artworks—handling them, reviewing the inscriptions on the bottom, taking photos, and seeing ever crack and fingerprint left by the artists. In introductory courses, students visit local and national museums, where they can visualize just how much they have learned. These object-based interactions are often the first my students have. They have never visited a museum, never handled an object. It is within these spaces and with these interactions that they feel the significance of art in their lives. Some students report an emotional reaction they did not expect, they say they felt intelligent and could tell their fellow museum goers what they have learned in class, and, more often than not, they remark on their desire to go back and to visit more museums.

Here is my call to you: no matter your course focus, from geology to art to mechanics, encourage your students to visit the university art gallery, walk through the local museum, or take a trip to a museum while on their vacation across the country, across the world. Art has much to teach us, if we only start to look.

"Seeing all of the Impressionist art was such an incredible experience...there is no better experience than going to a museum, seeing the artwork, and knowing the context surrounding them...thank you for allowing me to have the experience I did in Musée d'Orsay."

--A wonderful former student on their feelings after visiting the Musée d'Orsay and completing my nineteenth century art course

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