Theory, meet Action: public scholarship

I'm really glad we had to read this. I feel like it brings up an important aspect that I've noticed, but never considered the disconnect as so-called public scholarship. Being outside the academic realm of social science and humanities, this class has put me in contact with scholarly work that largely isn't accessible. As a student, I struggle through these, but I still feel, and totally am, outside these scholarly realms.

The Domke and Ellison public scholarship pieces connected with me far more than most of the others, and this is really what public scholarship is about-- putting knowledge and ideas into the hands of those outside of the scholarly realms in which the writers traffic; bridging the disconnect between the thinking within the scholarly realms and those that this knowledge can influence.

Without much knowledge of scholarly works and the conversations that are contained within certain fields, I simply do not feel comfortable and don't believe I can, write exclusively within a scholarly context. The accessibility that public scholarship strives for is something I take dearly. Regarding my own project, I'm not sure how to make my work accessible other than the way I write it/blog it/use video. Perhaps the way the writing is published-- not a book, because of the scope of that task, but perhaps something more diy-- like a zine? Just because it's photocopied and stapled together doesn't mean it's not valid knowledge. I wonder how amused the squatters will be if I hand them a zine documenting what I think of them/their stuff/artifacts.

Photo credit: Moira Clunie