I am Lauren Elizabeth (LJ) and I am a third-year PhD student in the Curriculum, Instruction and Teacher Education program. My research interests currently include considerations of the cultural epistemologies of New Orleans Black women and youth, Black feminist geographies, storytelling, and English Education. Narratives and stories are essential to my work, if not the work itself, and so I believe that the CHI fellowship will be an invaluable learning experience.
Prior to my time at MSU, I received my Master’s while also working as a Secondary English and Literacy teacher. Working with youth was a constant reminder of digital space and the critical conversations being had already by youth, as well as those that needed to be had by schools.
Because my work is informed by various disciplines and epistemologies, I am not only interested in how I synthesize my project(s), but I am also intrigued by the process, especially the exploration of crafting digital narratives and the ethics involved. This includes critical conversations concerning (at times violent) sociohistorical legacies of archives, mapping, and the representation of particular communities. I also hope to began a deeper exploration of my own pedagogical stances, such as “What is access and whom is it for?” What does it mean to digitize a story—especially when we think of authorship, agency, and ownership? Who are the mappers and cartographers—the meaning-makers of a place? While I do not plan to answer all of these questions or neatly tease them out within the year, I hope that as a CHI graduate fellow of the 2018-2019 cohort, I will be able to attend to these possibilities and tensions.
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