InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies

Researchers that conduct fieldwork outside of their home country oftentimes experience challenges and situations that are not described in textbooks.  While some encounters may be affirmational, other experiences can challenge identities and interrogate assumptions. In this narrative, I recount my experiences as a novice ethnographer.  I am from India and at that time, I was conducting research in an elementary school in the U.S. From the first day of entering the field, I discovered a process of internal transformation.  I hope that by sharing my experience other ethnographers will embrace their own process of reflexivity.

Neoliberalism stands at odds with the inherent in the mission of higher education, and does not strengthen the public good or promote democracy.  In light of this contrast, the literature review calls for a new conception of the notion of the public good for higher education institutions, rooted in the German philosophical tradition of  the I-though theory as developed by Ludwig Feuerbach.  Multiple works are in conversation with one another, bringing forth relevant pieces of literature and building upon the I-thou framework.  The literature is synthesized and interpreted to construct the I-thou theoretical framework for the advancement of the public good within higher education.  Though the ideas of nineteenth century German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach are not usually evoked when discussing the public good, his ideas can have a great impact on our understanding of the purposes of higher education and its promotion of the public good.

Increasingly hostile and unpredictable immigration policies can have traumatizing consequences for children of undocumented immigrants. This case study examines the way that increased practices of detention and deportation affect the childhood and adolescence of young people living in an anti-immigrant state like Arizona. Specifically, the life story of Katherine Figueroa during Arizona’s anti-immigrant climate, illustrates the struggle and implications for mixed-status families. The findings demonstrate the extent to which being separated from her parents influenced her mental health and academic life. The themes outlined in this paper suggest that in a continued repressive political context, children’s preoccupations and experiences with family separation are likely to have lasting consequences as these children transition into adulthood. Additionally, this study describes how community organizing, resources, support, and a proactive response to family separation can change the outcomes of parental detention. Findings from this study reveal, for educators, school administrators, counselors, community practitioners, and policy makers, how familial documentation status can have equally complex and lasting consequences for children’s academic, emotional, and physical well-being.

The Miracle is an artistic and activist queer project begun in 2004. This article takes the form of a transcribed interview between the founders of the Miracle and a graduate student volunteer. The authors, all participants in The Miracle, describe the queer bookmobile/mobile archives project as an intervention that seeks to protest the loss of queer community spaces in Los Angeles and Oakland, to temporarily disrupt the progress of gentrification and its attendant displacement of poor and minoritized communities, and to “redistribute” knowledge, literature, and information. The purpose of the article is to describe the activity as a memory project centered in a particular community and to continue a conversation between minoritized community groups and the archival profession in the mode of X, Campbell and Stevens’ 2009 contribution to Archivaria, “Love and Lubrication in the Archives, or rukus!: A Black Queer Archive for the United Kingdom.” In our work and in this article, we recognize that certain aspects of our practice are incommensurable with archival theory and professional archival standards of description, preservation, or access, but argue that genuine community-based work cannot take place exclusively in the remove of official institutions. Our alternative model of redistribution aims to meet people in the city, in their places of work, and all manner of public and private spaces as a project of memory preservation and political protest.