Collective Conversations: Talking About and Beyond Our Institutional Positions

Abstract How can communities on campus support scholars in developing specific, situated practices for ethical, accountable, impactful collaborations beyond campus? What opportunities can we open by being communally, radically present in our work? In considering these questions, I draw on three-plus years of organizing and facilitating two scholarly Collectives. These Collectives sustain lived community for scholars bending university systems toward liberatory work. From inside these Collectives, I trace seven guiding principles, including 1) learning alongside situated stories (as opposed to abstracted “advice”), 2) analyzing the specific institutional mechanisms we work through, 3) centering joy, 4) reimagining what we call possible, and 5) naming the places where we refuse educational systems’ dangerous expectations. I ground these principles in lived stories with fellow Collective members, celebrating how living alongside one another can open relational scholarships that are respectful, inspiring, undisciplined, and growing into what we need them to be.