URMILA VENKATESH2013

references

resumeexperience> curriculum> social justice> creative practice

contents

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resume

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Professional Experience

Master of Fine Arts, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, University of California, BerkeleyStudy Abroad immersion experiences, University of Granada, Spain (1995-96) High School, Chennai, India (1992-93)

EducationMay 2009June 1999

6

Director of Academic Planning and Co-Curricular InitiativesEugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, New York, NY

Assist with curriculum planning, implementation, assessment with faculty and leadership at both Lang and NSSRRepresent Lang on University Portfolio Committee and advise on portfolio program implementation and pedagogiesSupport University and Lang curriculum committees, developing policies for workflow and communicationHire and train support staff on project management, effective collaboration, professional developmentManage development and expansion of partnerships with New York cultural institutionsTeach Social Justice Scholars program, designing curriculum, networking opportunities, civic engagement partnershipsLead major web, visibility, and brand identity design overhaul

Curriculum / Portfolio Lead and Faculty Development Consultant, School of Social Work University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Managed evaluation of graduate curricula to measure learning outcomes and ensure continuous program improvementFacilitated retreats for faculty and administrators to make organizational change for a better curriculumDeveloped online learning agreements for students to capture insights while training in field work, and to articulate their learning outcome attainment over duration of degree programDesigned ePortfolio program for graduate students to articulate the meaningful skills, social justice philosophies, and professional identities developed from beginning to end of degree programCreated self-guided online learning modules to reach 350+ students annuallyDesigned trainings for active listening, appreciative inquiry, and design thinking to surface knowledge and strengths

Professional ePortfolio Program Designer and Instructor, Divisions of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Taught capstone seminars for students to integrate and communicate their professional, personal, and academic experiences; to set goals and the action plans to achieve them; and to articulate their value systemsTrained faculty and staff to incorporate active learning strategies and technology into teaching and supervisionAdvised on skills assessment, informational interviewing, network building, communication skills, job search strategiesManaged library of resources, tutorials, and best practices for developing professional identity Facilitated workshops for students, faculty, and staff on best practices for visual information design

Labor Organizer and Financial Manager, Graduate Employees Organization (at University of Michigan)American Federation of Teachers, Ann Arbor, MI

Mobilized members by building relationships and connecting peoples’ values and actions to social and political activismDesigned sustainable volunteer programs to recruit, develop, and retain members over several yearsOversaw large-scale labor actions, coordinating efforts of 700+ volunteers Led regular trainings and created resources on developing relationships, coalitions, group consensus and workflow Organized national and regional conferences, managing logistics of programming and attendeesSupervised $350,000 budget, financial records, and annual audit as financial manager of volunteer organizationEducated and supported officer corps and organizing, grievance, communication, and political action committeesGuided members to enforce contracts and negotiate relationships with administration/management

November 2012 - present

June 2011 -October 2012

June 2009 -May 2011

May 2004 - May 2009

E-Portfolios, Generative Interviewing, Technology and Design Training, Professional Development and Career Planning, Writing ConsultationMicrosoft Office Suite; familiarity with Microsoft Access, QuickbooksAdobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Captivate) Adobe Dreamweaver, Familiarity with HTML, CSSDigital and film photography, darkroom printingProficient in Spanish (spoken and written)

SkillsInstruction

AdministrationGraphic Design

Web DesignPhotography

Languages 7

Co-chair, Understanding Race Committee, a group of faculty and staff planning campus and community programming, dialogues, and educational activities that address race and other social constructs

Appointed member, Communications Committee, Imagining America a consortium of universities and organizations dedicated to advancing the public and civic purposes of arts, design, and humanities

Appointed member, Advisory Board, Arts of Citizenship, University of Michigan supporting university- community partnerships, professional development and public scholarship in the humanities, art, and design

Elected member, Diversity Committee, University of Michigan Library System staff committee dedicated to developing programming and education about diversity and cultural competence

Preparing Future Faculty Certificate ProgramCenter for Research on Learning and Teaching, University of Michigan

Administrative Service2012

2012 - present

2011

2010 - 2011

2009

June 2013 - present

May 2012

March 2012

October 2011

September 2011

May 2011

2011-2012

October 2010

September 2010

May 2010

Selected Teaching and PresentationsCo-director, Jeffrey Gural Social Justice Scholars ProgramEugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts

Curricular and Co-curricular Approaches to Integrative Learning and Portfolios (panel)Enriching Scholarship Conference, University of Michigan

Electronic Portfolios and Integrative Learning Pedagogy in Social Work Education (educational webinar)Faculty Development Session on Distributed Learning, California Social Work Education Council

Presentation Series for Faculty: Connecting Course Content to Professional Development (instructor)School of Social Work, University of Michigan

Strategies for Community Organizing Through Relationship-Building (guest lecture)Social Justice in the Real World, Program on Intergroup Relations, University of Michigan

Creative Strategies to Encourage Deep Reflection Across Experiences (panel and demonstration)Creativity, Play and the Imagination Conference, Teachers College, Columbia University

Capstone Seminar: Developing a Professional Portfolio - Your Skills, Goals, and Philosophy (instructor)Dvision of Student Affairs, University of Michigan

Adopting Portfolios at Virginia Tech and University of Michigan Annual Conference for Educational Technologies, Sakai Foundation

Building a Career in Public Scholarship (panel)Arts of Citizenship, Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan

Applying Portfolio Thinking To Your Students’ Learning Experiences (workshop)Enriching Scholarship Conference, University of Michigan

experience

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CURRICULUM

summaryEducating students to articulate the skills and knowledge gained across curricular and co-curricular contextsTraining and consulting with faculty and staff on best practices for high-impact teaching and supervisingDeveloping the interpersonal relationships, goal-setting strategies, and action planning necessary for sustaining people and organizations 9

curriculum < learning portfolio program design

Now what does this reveal about my future choices? How do I set goals in line with my values?

What have I learned? What skills am I acquiring?What do I now know, and what can I now do?

So what does this mean about my beliefs and values? What approach do I use and what do I care about?

what?

so what?

now what?

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Background The University of Michigan’s ePortfolio program was built from the concept and processes of integrative learn-ing implicit in the curricula of the university’s academic programs. Since then, academic and co-curricular units have adopted these portfolio-based processes across campus, from the Schools of Medicine, Business, and Public Health, to the College of Literature, Science, and Arts and the Division of Student Affairs.

Students make meaning from their key learning experiences across multiple contexts, and learn to recognize the adaptive ex-pertise they can then apply to future practice. A typical integrative learning portfolio will include key learning experiences, one’s guiding philosophy that connects those experiences, and future goals derived from that philosophy.

What’s the impetus? The School of Social Work wanted to scale its portfolio program to be available to all students, and used the drive of reaccrediation to explore creative pedagogical strategies for capturing students’ learning outcomes. Portfolios have proven to be an excellent tool for providing students with a deep and iterative process, and a concrete yet dynamic product to share with multiple audiences. We decided to increase access to this powerful learning process, and could use the data as one of our direct measures of learning.

What’s the challenge? The School was only equipped to each 30-40 students annually through an elective capstone seminar, and we needed a way to scale this effort across the curriculum of 700+ students. The portfolios were developed only at the end of the program, and students felt that by the time they were graduating, they did not have ample time to develop their insights. We needed to find opportunities throughout the curriculum for students to articulate learning over time.

What’s the solution? To scale the program effectively, we implemented three processes.

Leverage technology to deliver content to students on a larger scaleWe designed a hybrid (in-class and online) seminar by creating a series of online, self-guided learning modules to deliver static content, and adapt the in-class seminars to be interactive sites for feedback and iteration. Students would follow the modules first, doing deep and reflective writing exercises in response, and then would bring this work to share in peer-driven dialogue and reading activities during classtime. Seminars could triple in size because the work is more distributed and self-directed, and relies on peer- and group-facilitated dialogue and feedback, in addition to the supervision of the instructor.

Train faculty to integrative learning activity throughout curriculum from beginning to endThe portfolio was a product we wanted to be reflective of the entire arc of learning. However, we did not feel that every course needed a portfolio assignment, and every instructor was not necessarily able to take on new assignments or training to help develop portfolio reflections. I worked with individual faculty to bring the central guiding questions of integrative learning practice into assignments and classwork, so that students connect what they are learning in each course and field experience to their future work. I asked faculty and field instructors to use the model of “What, so what, and now what?” as a simple and effective way to engage students actively assessing their own learning. Students could bring these insights into the two (mid-program and capstone) integrative seminars designed to set aside time in their schedule just for portfolio development.

Deepen the involvement of multiple advisors in the field, professional contexts, and alumni networksWe asked field instructors and supervisors, who guide students in their professional development outside of the classroom, to integrate these questions into their own regular feedback sessions, and help students develop the necessary skills and self-awareness to be more effective professionals, thinkers, and activists. We also reached out to advanced students to be peer mentors and consult with students through our Career Center. Finally, we saw portfolios as a tool we could share with alumni to offer feedback to current students, therefore engaging alumni as mentors, networks, and possibly future donors.

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FOUNDATION(21 CREDITS)

515 531 522

683691ADVANCED (30 CREDITS)

ELECTIVES(9 CREDITS)

FIELDRESEARCH/EVALUATION

Background In order to meet reaccreditation requirements, the School of Social Work needed a continuous quality improvement plan, which included: creating outcome measures; implementing these throughout the curriculum and collecting data; analyzing and reporting data to all constitutents; and finally, using the data to intervene and improve the curriculum in response.

What’s the impetus? Given national standards from the relevant accrediting body, faculty needed to map these standards to the current complex curriculum, looking at individual courses, three different tracks, nine specializations, and several scholars and certificate pro-grams. The School wanted to implement portfolios to benefit the professional and personal development of all students, but also recognized the simultaneous opportunity to ask students to consider their development of these competencies and tie this connection into their portfolio content.

What’s the challenge? Individual faculty were not all equally aware of all course offer-ings and curriculur sequencing of the program, so they did not know how their own courses fit into the larger schema. As a whole the faculty did not know if its curriculum still had a clear rationale for the offerings that had developed organically over time. Without a sense of the curriculum, we could not develop a plan for integrating portfolio activities into the sequence. We needed to organize the faculty into a yearlong discussion and action-planning effort to get us ready for this process.

What’s the solution? To facilitate a faculty conversation, I worked with our program evaluation team to create a visual diagram of our curriculum, which demonstrated both the breadth, the sequencing, and the divergent paths laid out in a curriculm that developed over time. Once we provided a comprehensive picture, faculty were positioned to see and address the strengths, gaps and redundancies that emerged. Faculty used this diagram as a starting point for addressing curricular needs, measuring learn-ing outcomes, and most importantly, providing students with a more cohesive program experience.

curriculum < Mapping for Program Evaluation

CO = Community OrganizationIP = Interpersonal PracticeMHS = Management of Human ServicesSPE = Social Policy + EvaluationLEGEND

PRACTICE METHODS

COMHS

IPSPE

12

A

B

PORTFOLIO SEMINARS

500 502

601605

611620

616 613

606612

HBSE

614

HBSE

HUMAN BEHAVIOR

14-28 Advanced Practice Behaviors

41 Core Practice Behaviors

530 521 560

Schematic Diagram of Explicit Curriculum UM School of Social Work

644 634

636

633 647

694 699

698

696 697

IP 2 of 4

650

673

670

671

674

685

623

624

625

628

651

652

654

657

658

674

660

661

662

663

664

651

665

and also

SPE1 of 4

CO2 of 7

MHS 2 of 7

SWPS Methods

799

701

702

708

715700

703

707

729

730

790

Practice Method

642

SWPS

SOCIAL WELFARE

SOCIAL PRACTICE METHODS

PRACTICE AREA REQUIREMENTS PRACTICE METHOD REQUIREMENTS

709

13

PRACTICE AREASA = AgingC+Y = Children and Youth CSS = Communites and Social SystemsH = HealthMH = Mental Health

Aging

C+Y CSS

Health

MentalHealth

SchoolSW

Background Graduate students in this program are engaged in robust clinical training and field experiences, where they apply the theoretical and conceptural frameworks from coursework to real and immediate work in local communities. To deepen their learning, students create assignments in consultation with their supervisors through a tool called a field educational agreement. These assignments must demonstrate that a student is making progress towards demonstrating competence in ten major practice areas, from critical thinking, to professional behavior, from recognizing biases, to advo-cating for social economic justice.

What’s the impetus? To design a learning tool that easily connects what a student does with what competency the stu-dent is demonstrating, and to collect the data from 700+ students to inform quality improvement.

What’s the challenge? The Office of Field Instruction had two challenges: one pedagogical, and one technological. First, the current agreement asks students to look at a competency and then determine the appropriate work task to accom-plish. Students are unfamiliar with the language and meaning of competencies and therefore struggle to generate ap-propriate work plans. Second, the work is currently done completely on paper, and in order to log this data, the School needs to transition to an online system for documenting these field educational agreements as soon as possible.

What’s the solution? An online field learning system that guides students to make connections between academ-ic content and professional practice, and that reports the necessary data for program improvement.

Help students reach articulation by starting with what they knowFirst, students plan out what work they are going to do in their field placement. Later, they work with their instructor to determine the level of competence that was demonstrated in that work, and areas for improvement to focus on the fol-lowing term. Rather than struggle to understand practice behaviors and competencies at the beginning stages of educa-tion, students begin with someting tangible and recognizable - that is, the work they are actually doing - and later, upon completion, they consider what skills, values, and frameworks they developed in the process.

Leverage technology to scale the programUsing an online educational agreement could perform far beyond a data mining tool. An online tool allows students to bring their documented insights from one internship to the next, familiarizing supervisors with their skills, strengths, and opportunities for growth. The online system also records progress over time, so that students can be iterative and thoughtful in what, how, and why they are learning what they learn. Finally, this type of technology presented us with an opportunity to consider how we could connect these insights into final portfolio completion.

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curriculum < Technology for Practice-based Learning

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summaryWorking actively towards access and equity in educational, labor, and social communities

Teaching students principles of social justice in order to practice conscientious and responsible civic engagement

SOCIALJUSTICE

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As an educator, adminstrator, and activist, I have developed strategies for connecting people’s values, personal experiences, and social identities to pursuing conscientious and effective social change. I have worked with specific identity groups, developing community-based campaigns to elevate the issues these groups faced.

1 Jeff Gural Scholars Program at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal ArtsAlong with the Director of Civic Engagement and Social Justice, I direct a new program to focus students on pertinent issues of social justice, and lead them through a process of engagement and self-reflection from orientation to graduation. The program supplements students’ financial aid, brings together students with demonstrated interest in civic engagement and social justice, and provides the cohort experience for students to develop a sense of community while attending college.

We designed the first year of this intensive program to be:• sequenced to allow students to gain experience with civic engagement and social justice along a developmental timeline • attentive to the strengths and opportunities of a liberal arts education, both during and beyond the college experience• a coherent, continuous, iterative learning experience oriented towards praxis, • a focused inquiry into geographically and contextually rooted social problems

We designed this program to support:• individual identity formation, articulation of values, skill and knowledge building that orient them to future pathways• community building, collective decision-making, and opportunities for leadership and mentorship among peers• exposure to local, national, and international resources: people, organizations, spaces, contacts, networks, issues• an understanding of social justice and civic engagement principles, and thoughtful, critical, self-reflexive practices• opportunities to work on projects connected to issues• expectations of communicating and sharing ideas with each other, with the Lang community and the program benefactor

2 Organizing scholar-workers to improve working and living conditionsWhile working as a labor and community organizer with employees at the University of Michigan, I organized and mobilized people towards self-advocacy and collective action.

International Graduate Students• Developed campaign with international graduate students to voice needs and raise awareness about issues affecting their lives

and campus climate in post-9/11 environment• Facilitated weekly meeting with international graduate students; created yearlong timeline of goals, objectives and actions; and

delegated weekly tasks to core leadership• Planned year-end campus-wide graduate student forum, and advocated for crisis management program for students stranded

abroad because of visa issues

Student Parents• Organized interest group for students interested in parenting to discuss and minimize the challenges they face when attending

school full-time and teaching part-time• Advocated for institutional resources to support parents with subsidies to use childcare while teaching• Developed communication materials to connect student parents to resources on campus• Organized annual social events to create network in Family Housing campus communities

Protection of Affirmative Action and Same Sex Domestic Partner Benefits• Organized logistics, publicity and mobilization as part of local and state-wide campaigns to protect same sex domestic partner

benefits and programs of affirmative action in state of Michigan• Advocated for inclusion of domestic partnership status in eligibility for healthcare coverage• Supported TBLGQ caucus within community organization to develop and disseminate message

social justice < education and activism

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CREATIVE PRACTICE

summaryDocumenting stories that connect people, places, things, and ideasUsing empathy and generative listening to unearth insight and activate change18

creative practice < extraordinary objects projectBackgroundI am pursuing a continuous ethnographic project, ExtraOrdinary Object, which explores our relationship to the quotidian, by documenting the denotative and connotative characteristics they hold. I interview people about their relationships to the objects in their lives, asking them to ponder the ways that ordinary things have extraordinary meaning. After I record these stories, I create line drawings of the objects based on the descriptions and photographs of the original objects. Below, I describe the prompt I give people to elicit stories. To date I have collected over 200 stories, with no plans to stop.

Photo from gallery event. Participants chose an object found in their homes and were interviewed about their relationship to it. Over the day, the names of different objects were collected and posted to a floor plan

drawing representing a generic residential space.

Instructions Think about an object that one might consider ordinary, but that is extraordinary to you. Ordinary can mean commonplace, commonly found, commonly purchased, easily reproducible or mass-produced, or simply something that isn’t of great value in a marketplace. Or, it could just be ordinary because no one else cares about it. A poster, a photograph, a pair of sunglasses, an old shoe, a new car. A locket, while very special, isn’t necessarily impossible to find.A handmade armoire is of significant value but isn’t the only one of its kind. Some things, like a fruit, might expire quickly.

Extraordinary can mean that it has formal qualities you find incredible, beautiful, delicate, special for whatever reason. Or it can mean that while everyone else thinks it ordinary, you find it extraordinary in its usefulness, longevity, innova-tion, commonplaceness, excessiveness, potential for good or harm, anything. Or, perhaps when you see/use/eat/share/find/throw/wear/sit on/chew on/step on this object, it reminds you of something completely unique to your own life and no one else’s. Here are your prompts. Prompt What’s so ordinary about this object?What does it look like? How big is it? What is the surface like? How does it function? What do you use it for? What is its general purpose? Where does it live? Where did it live? Do you carry it with you? Do you keep it at home? Do you hide it? Do you display it? And what’s so extraordinary?Tell me a story about this object and why it’s significant.

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My object is a garlic press- in particular, a garlic press that wasn’t mine, but was my friend’s press. She gave me the job of squish-ing the garlic with the garlic press for a pork tenderloin dinner and I felt honored to have a job and do something useful, and then I used it improperly, I think, and broke it. I’m not sure I used it improperly, it might have just broken, maybe it had had its life as a garlic press and it wouldn’t have mattered who was using it, it would have broken at that moment. I like to think that. But I sense I did something wrong maybe, or used it improperly, because it just all felt wrong from the beginning the way I was trying to use it and then I forced it. Anyway, it went in the garbage, I believe. She and her husband did not make a big deal out of it. In fact, they complemented me on how well I ended up cutting the garlic without the press. And it wasn’t overdone how they were complementing me. it was like really, it seemed, not a big deal at all that I had just broken their garlic press. But I felt like a bit of jerk. It was metal and plastic I believe. By now—this happened in early January in Massachussetts (I can never spell that state)—I should have certainly sent them a new one, but I haven’t.

This is all extraordinary, I believe. Every time I use my own garlic press, like tonight, I feel guilty about it. Not super guilty. But just a little, and I think how nice it would be to send them a garlic press. I’d wrap it in tissue paper or on a bed of cottonish material and put it into a flat box, like it was piece of jewelry. I can imagine it would be a fun package to get in the mail. Slightly heavy if it is a nice metal one. And they would pick up the package and they would wonder, before opening it: What is it? What could it be?

I’m realizing I’m soon going to have to go to the store, I’m go-ing to have to find a good kitchen store, and buy a new one and send it to them. The garlic press I broke had a kind of square or trapezoidal end, silvery metal. And a pink handle that was metal, but maybe with a pink plastic or rubberlike coating on the handle. Hard to know really. It wasn’t as sturdy certainly as the one I have at home, and I think that I might have expected it to be like the one I have, and you can’t just assume things like that. This is where it leads when you assume like I did, and now look, look at me, I’m a gosh darn mess about the whole thing. Garlic presses are difficult to clean out, but they are a good tool. I’ve al-ways chopped garlic but then i saw my friend make fish one night with the garlic press and it seemed like such and easy and good idea. Your fingers don’t end up smelling like garlic if you’re with people and you’re trying to make a fair impression. My parents have one that cleans out easily. And that is the kind that i would send to my friends if I ever do get around to doing it. My friends probably already bought a new one, but it wouldn’t hurt to have two in the event that someone uses one of the presses improp-erly and breaks it. They’ll have a back up.

Garlic Press Terrence

creative practice < extraordinary objects project

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Grapefruits are amazing. They have this epic size, the “king” of citrus fruits, if you will. Thick skin that’s smooth and soft and the most amazing fleshy interior...ruby red or champagne white (take your pick, california or florida), they’re pulpy and massive, and tart, and sweet all in one. In Spanish they have a saying: one’s “better half” is their “media naranja,” literally your “half orange”...Of course, that oranges, not grapefruits, but it’s stuck with me ever since I first heard the phrase. My mother and father have shared exactly one grapefruit every single morning of their married life. My mom cuts it in half and then cuts along the individual pieces and the enter circumference so that you can eat it right out of the skin, like a bowl. They still do it, almost 70 years old. I don’t think they have a better expression of their harmony and I don’t think they need one--you take my half, I take yours, there are not equal (one half inevitably gets more pits, or more skin, or more juice), but each part comes from the same fruit. That’s it.

Grapefruit Patty

I´m not sure what brand it is, something you could by at any drugstore in 1999. It´s about the size of your palm, maybe a little smaller, and on the outside, before you open it, it´s brown and pretty dingy. When you open the compact, there is a cloudy mirror on one side. The mirror is covered in compacted powder and it´s hard to see much, except towards the very center of the mirror. On the opposite side of the mirror is where the powder lives. Even though the compact is 10 yeard old, there is still some of that compacted powder around the edges. There is also a thin, well used powder puff. The reason why this little compact is so extraordinary to me is because it used to belong to my mother, who died back in 1999. It was the one that sat in her makeup drawer that August. It was the one she used the day she died. She touched it. She opened it. She looked into that mirror. She used it everyday. That dingy little poweder puff actually touched her face. HER face. And the smell. The smell is so EXTRA-ordinary. It so reminds me of her. She used that brand of face powder for a really long time so when I find that little compact, waiting for me in a dark drawer, I just have to open it and there she is. A little bit of her. Her face. Her smell. I can touch it. I can open it.

I can look into the mirror.

Powder Compact Bella

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I am fascinated with the designed environment, but a specific kind—the vernacular adaptations of office spaces and old brownstones, movie theaters and warehouses, strip malls and community centers that have been converted into entire ethnic neighborhoods. Urban appropria-tion by immigrant communities is familiar to anyone who has ever visited the Chinatowns and Little Tokyos common to many American cities and suburbs. They began as trade and commercial spaces, but as they serve a growing immigrant population, they become centralized cultural centers as well. These spaces can serve as a dynamic forum for community members to shift into new public roles as they settle into a new home. Over time, as wealth in the community increases, so does the square footage of many of these enclaves. As these spaces enlarge, their purposes multiply. Growing up, I was often puzzled that we would dress up in Indian clothes and drive thirty, sometimes sixty, miles away to eat dry samosas in a strip mall just to commune, silently, with strangers who looked and dressed and sounded like us. Now, when I hear a ghazal playing in the brow threading store in Brooklyn, or wander past an Indian grocery store on my way to the subway, I suddenly welcome a feeling of familiarity I didn’t even know I was missing.

The stage has its familiar characters. Someone shopping for the ingredients to make that evening’s meal might also be asking the grocer about his unmarried daughter in hopes of a match with her son. Someone seeking legal advice about his brother’s green card status might invite the lawyer to a weekend house concert featuring a touring classical sitar player flown in from India. Maybe the lawyer sees enough cases of immigration gone sour and decides to run for the office of state representative; she runs her ads in the popular India Currents magazine that people pick up at the sari shop downstairs. Another patron might begin graduate school forty miles away and not interact intimately with a single colleague, but might return faithfully, every weekend, in search of the only food that approximates her mother’s cooking.

My thesis project, for my graduate degree in photography and design, began as a yearlong photographic exploration of immigrant neighborhoods in the US, grew to include India, and ended as a broader project examining the tense process of portraiture. Below is an excerpt of the introduction to my project.

creative practice < documentary photography

And we are children born in the United States, the daughters and sons of our immigrant parents, and we are not quite like the other kids in class and on the cul-de-sac; not nearly as Indian as the cousins who moved in with us until my aunts and uncles find a cul-de-sac of their own. We spend our teenage Satur-day mornings on road trips to and from Little India, sprawled on the backseat of the family Honda wearing ill-fitting Indian clothes, with empty stomachs on the ride there, and by afternoon, full of potatoes and cumin and cloves and chickpeas, fingers sticky with sweet orange jalebi syrup and no longer able to navigate the screens, devices, text messaging, and video games that make California traffic bearable.

One evening, shortly after college graduation, I sat with my father in an Indian restaurant painted seven different shades of a dusty mauve. After I finished an unnecessarily critical tirade about the color choice, Dad countered with the in-formation that these pinks chosen by the restaurant owner were direct references

to the desert region of Northern India, from which this particular restarauteur’s family came. And suddenly, with his one comment, I saw my environment made up of so many different languages - each sign and color and fabric and choice a word, each wall a sentence, and each building a story - and I could not assume that I was fluent in any of them. So I begin to take pictures to learn. Photos as flash cards.

I set out to photograph three different Little India neighborhoods in the United States, documenting the new visual vocabulary defining our urban, suburban, exurban, and rural surroundings. I was interested in how such enclaves developed a unique visual identity, imbued with cultural references best understood from within a community. I hoped to build a photographic taxonomy illustrating the visual and cultural cues common to the Little India neighborhoods that I was visiting, and did not plan to photograph the people invested in the spaces. Then, my presence intersected with the people and narratives who inject life into that same space. As much as I wanted to pho-tograph anonymously, imperceptibly, from behind stacked bags of rice and statues of Ganesha, I couldn’t stay hidden.

When it came to Little India, my assumption was that I had a common identification with many of the customers and storeowners. I thought that this common identification would give me an unquestioned freedom of movement in and out of these spaces. I hope that because I look like everyone else, I “belonged” there and would have to give no explanation for my unusual documentary behaviors. Soon after beginning my project, however I found that photographing public spaces and the people who frequent them presented chal-lenges I had not expected. While my original intent was to understand the role of such spaces in the immigrant experience, my project took on a second objective: exploring my role and responsibilities as a photographer and my relationship to the subjects I photograph.

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references

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Dr. Tiffany MarraDirector, Hub for Teaching and Learning ResourcesOffice of the Provost, University of Michigan, Dearborn, MIe: tmarra@umich.edu

Judy Pryor-RamirezDirector of Civic Engagement and Social JusticeEugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, New York City, NYe: pryorraj@newschool.edu

Dr. Ellen FreebergAssociate Dean for Faculty and CurriculumNew School for Social Research, New York City, NYe: freebere@newschool.edu

HIGHER EDUCATION ADMINISTRATION

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE WORK

Dr. Afia Ofori-MensaDirector, Office of Undergraduate ResearchVisiting Assistant Professor of Comparative American Studies and Africana StudiesFaculty Affiliate with the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist StudiesOberlin College, Oberlin, OHe: aoforime@oberlin.edu

Dr. Timothy K. EatmanAssistant Professor, School of Education, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NYCo-Director, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Lifee: tkeatman@syr.edu

Kim YasudaProfessor, Spatial Studies, University of California, Santa BarbaraCo-Director, University of California Institute for Research in the Artse: yasuda@arts.ucsb.edu

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Urmila Venkatesh