NEMLA seminar

IMPERCEPTIBLY OFF WALLS

“Imperceptibly, they have closed me off from the outside world” C.P. Cavafy

Citizen TALES Commons is a creative collective that emerged in response to the visible inequity in academia and the marginalization of collaborative creative scholarship. Employing civic engagement across disciplines, Citizen TALES commons aspires to transform intellectual labor into meaningful experiences to break away from epistemic inequity in traditional modes of academic production and dissemination of knowledge. Like a Greek chorus, Citizen TALES commons unites and amplifies diverse voices about citizenship while empowering its members to raise their individual voices through empathy in the service of equitable futures. This seminar will delve into issues of identities as shaped by language, history, media and space, with a particular emphasis on the notion of “citizen architect” one of the significant figures to recognize and share diverse social and cultural identities in a place by creating welcoming spaces for everyone regardless of their gender, race, ethnicity, religion, etc. This session will examine the “citizen architect” framework both through the specific definition from the 2018 American Institute of architecture guidebook and Walter Benjamin’s Arcades project to explore how identities are constructed and shaped by space, language, memory, and trauma. Exploring how physical and metaphorical space shapes identities, Citizen TALES commons collective will display on a micro-level the ways in which space prompts reconsideration of the self and how memories evoked by space become internalized and embodied. Citizen TALES commons creates mechanisms of collaboration that abolishes the internal walls reinforced by societal walls.

“Citizen Tales Commons: Imperceptibly off Walls” seminar, as part of the 51st Northeast Modern Language Association (NEMLA) Annual Convention, will be held in Boston, Massachusetts, March 5-8, 2020. 

Technoutopias tour