Taking Risks: Feminists, Activism, and Activist Research in the Americas
Work-in-progress ~ March 2011

In the spring of 2010 I was asked to organize a seminar for the upcoming Imagining America conference scheduled for September in Seattle, Washington. I had never heard of Imagining America nor had I ever organized a seminar style panel for a conference but it sounded like an interesting event. I proposed a seminar titled "Feminism, Activism, and Activist Research in the Americas" with the following CFP:
"Researching justice, resistance, and feminism in the Americas invariably produces tensions: between the researcher and the subjects; the researcher and her academic discipline; the researcher's insider and outsider positions; between competing interpretations of history. This seminar focuses on these tensions which arise in the process of doing research in which we feel personally invested. Questions on the table include, but are not limited to: How do scholars do academic research about activism which privileges the activists as audience and collaborators rather than one's academic discipline? How does the researcher navigate her insider-outsider role particularly when the nation and diaspora are simultaneously involved? How does the researcher tell a story which may differ from the activists' interpretation?"

I received many fascinating proposals and we effortlessly filled our ninety minute seminar with great enthusiasm and passion for our own and each others' work. After the seminar all of us relocated and continued our discussion for another couple of hours. And that still was not enough time. I took the lead and have decided to turn our papers and seminar into an anthology tentatively titled: Taking Risks: Feminists, Activism, and Activist Research in the Americas. Taking Risks focuses on tensions that arise in the process of doing research connected to activism and is meant to serve as a dialogue among scholars committed to social justice scholarship.

Our contributors take up the following questions, and more: How does one research a movement centered in a tourist destination without turning the activists into objects of the tourist gaze? How does one research against a group or nation's dominant leftist political narrative without undermining a social justice agenda and alienating herself from activists? How does one center the voices of resistance without speaking directly with those protagonists? How does one navigate the contentious field of human rights advocacy without further victimizing the survivors while still acknowledging their suffering? How does one reconcile the divide between activists and academic discipline as audience? Our current case-studies include: Human rights activism in Chile, political graffiti in Oaxaca, the independent library movement in Cuba, women resisting violence in Medellín, the Juarez murders, human trafficking and forced labor, Chilean exile feminism, and we are presently seeking more. If you are interested in submitting a proposal, click here.

For an overview of the project see this power-point presentation (12MB) I delivered at the Pacific Sociological Association meeting in March 2011.