Blog

Events, Mentoring, Research

Some Reflections on the MFFC Dissertation Workshop

Frances Tran

Before I offer my reflections, I want to thank both Roderick Ferguson (Professor of African American and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago) and Brent Edwards (Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University) for making room in their busy summer schedules to help facilitate the first Mentoring Future Faculty of Color (MFFC) dissertation workshop. Thanks also to Herman Bennett (Professor of History at the Graduate Center, CUNY) for helping us organize this event, and of course to the Office of Educational Opportunity and Diversity Programs (OEODP) and the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC) at the Graduate Center, CUNY for contributing the funds that made this workshop possible. Last but not least, I want to thank my co-conspirators in the Mentoring Future Faculty of Color project for dedicating their time and energy to planning this event and, more importantly, for agreeing to share pieces of their truly exciting work.

This dissertation workshop was a rare opportunity to participate in a critical conversation about our research with established scholars of color. Professor Ferguson and Professor Edwards engaged us in a discussion about what it means to frame and write a dissertation, asking tough but important questions about exigency, methodology, and text selection. The comments and suggestions I received on the opening pages of my first chapter will be a great resource as I move forward with writing (and revising) my work. It was a rewarding experience to be able to discuss my project among such a supportive group and to receive candid advice about framing my dissertation, especially as I begin to think about navigating the job market.

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Research

Revising the Dissertation Abstract

Frances Tran

One of the most useful pieces of advice I received from my mentors is not only to focus on writing my dissertation, but to write about it (often). This practice of constantly framing and reframing my project has helped me keep track of my research questions and their exigency. It reminds me of why I do the work that I do and keeps me engaged in it. Plus, it never hurts to give yourself a bit of breathing room to reflect on what you have learned in the process of your research and to recognize what you have accomplished so far.

One of the reflecting experiments I engaged in recently was to revise my dissertation abstract to offer more grounding in terms of motive, methodology, and audience. You can check it out below:

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Teaching

An Experiment with Student Facilitation

Frances Tran

This spring I experimented with student facilitation for the first time in my English 255 course, “Re-figuring the Global.” Although I have always asked my students to present on their blog responses, this semester I decided to go one step further by making them actively responsible for stimulating and shaping class discussion. Naturally, I had some anxieties about executing this in class and how students might respond to the added pressure, but I am glad I took the risk. My students went above and beyond any expectations I had for this experiment- the different approaches they took to facilitating class conversation were incredibly generative and energizing, especially for a class that met at 7:45am.

I also found that more students participated this semester than in previous years. Although this could have just been because I had an amazing group, I also think it’s because they were more comfortable dialoguing with each other than with me constantly leading the discussion. I have learned so much from listening to their conversations, which allowed me to see texts I have read three or four times over in radically different and inspiring ways. I have also learned a lot about myself as a teacher from this semester– about when to stand back and let students grapple with uncomfortable classroom silences and when to intervene to provide necessary information about historical and political contexts that can enrich our engagements with the text.

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Mentoring

Mentoring Lessons

Frances Tran

Last Friday, the Mentoring Future Faculty of Color project (MFFC) held its final lunch and lecture series so I wanted to use this opportunity to reflect on what has been an incredibly inspiring and generative spring program. First, I’d like to thank Nikhil Pal Singh (Associate Professor of Social & Culture Analysis and History, New York University), Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman (Associate Professor of African and Afro-American Studies and English, Brandeis University), and Tina Campt (Professor of Africana and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, Barnard College) for agreeing to share their research and engaging us in conversation. Thanks also to my amazing allies in MFFC whose energies and organizing skills helped make these events such a success.

All three lectures raised important questions that have pushed me to reflect more critically on my own scholarship. Professor Singh’s talk, “Race, Crime and Police Power in the Making of U.S. Empire” reminded me of the important histories of racialized criminality and policing in the United States that will inform my thinking as I explore contemporary forms of racialization and disciplining that manifest within the U.S. academy today. Professor Abdur-Rahman’s discussion of her book, Against the Closet: Black Political Longing and the Erotics of Race (2012), introduced a different genealogy for African American literature by tracing the development of tropes of sexual difference, which both excites and inspires me to find other ways of reading and conceiving Asian American literatures in my research. Finally, Professor Campt’s presentation on the serendipitous encounters that led her to her current work on convict photo albums (collected at the Archives of the Western Cape in South Africa) and the haptic dimensions of working in the archive are lessons I will take with me as I prepare for my own archival encounters in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University this summer.

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