dara culhane | Simon Fraser University (original) (raw)

Papers by dara culhane

Presses de l'Université Laval eBooks, Aug 24, 2021

Performance matters, May 4, 2015

What if we consider an archive a sensorium, and ourselves as multisensory researcher-beings atten... more What if we consider an archive a sensorium, and ourselves as multisensory researcher-beings attentive to and curious about how embodied and affective experience infuses our practices as meaning makers and knowledge producers? I offer this experimental piece as a response to this question, and as a provocation/invitation to readers.

The panel displays the text "Their Spirits Live Within Us" This is panel 76, section 4

The opm1ons and findings expressed in the Simon Fraser University Sociology and A nthropology Und... more The opm1ons and findings expressed in the Simon Fraser University Sociology and A nthropology Undergraduate Journal are not necessary those of the Simon Fraser Student Society, So ciology and Anthropology Student Union, or the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at S imon Fraser University or their respective Directors and Executives. All material contained herein is Copyright 2014 by the respective authors. Permission to re print or reproduce the material contained herein is prohibited without express written permissio n from the author with the exception of dissemination for non-profit, educational, academic, or informative purposes.

The opm1ons and findings expressed in the Simon Fraser University Sociology and A nthropology Und... more The opm1ons and findings expressed in the Simon Fraser University Sociology and A nthropology Undergraduate Journal are not necessary those of the Simon Fraser Student Society, So ciology and Anthropology Student Union, or the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at S imon Fraser University or their respective Directors and Executives. All material contained herein is Copyright 2014 by the respective authors. Permission to re print or reproduce the material contained herein is prohibited without express written permissio n from the author with the exception of dissemination for non-profit, educational, academic, or informative purposes.

THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES what may first appear to be a relatively mundane event and an apparently co... more THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES what may first appear to be a relatively mundane event and an apparently common-sense project: assembling approximately twenty women (faculty members, graduate students, community-based researchers) in one space (one room in one building at a designated address marked on a map), at one time (from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Greenwich time, according to a twenty-four-hour clock), on one day (a date plotted on the Julian calendar as 23 July 2000). The reason these diverse groups of women got together was to collaborate on designing and planning research intended to document and analyze the relationships between housing and health as created, understood, and articulated by low-income women living in inner-city Vancouver. Specifically, we were gathering to plan a six-week pilot project to test the participatory methodology we hoped to practise during a three-year research project entitled the Health and Home Research Project. Through offering a "thick description"...

What if we consider an archive a sensorium, and ourselves as multisensory researcher-beings atten... more What if we consider an archive a sensorium, and ourselves as multisensory researcher-beings attentive to and curious about how embodied and affective experience infuses our practices as meaning makers and knowledge producers? I offer this experimental piece as a response to this question, and as a provocation/invitation to readers.

The Door is Open: Memoir of a Soup Kitchen Volunteer by Bart Campbell The Heart of the Community... more The Door is Open: Memoir of a Soup Kitchen Volunteer by Bart Campbell The Heart of the Community: The Best of the Carnegie Community Newsletter by Paul Taylor Heroines by Lincoln Clarkes

Réinventer l'ethnographie : pratiques imaginatives et méthodologies créatives, 2021

Anthropologica, Jul 1, 2011

Prologue: A Moment of Ethical EngagementT approached me as I headed out the door after the last m... more Prologue: A Moment of Ethical EngagementT approached me as I headed out the door after the last meeting of the "Stories and Plays Project":T: Is this IT?Dara Culhane: Yep! This is IT.T: Well, now I want to ask you for something.DC: O.K..T: I waited until the project was over. Now, I've done something for you, I want to ask you to do something for me. You can say no if you want to. No strings attached for you or for me.DC: O.K?T: You know I'm going to court next week. . .DC: Yeah...?T: Would you write a letter for me for the sentencing?DC: Oh, sure! I've written tons of those letters. No problem.T: I'm not asking you to bullshit. I want you to write exactly what you really think of me. What I did in this project.DC: Of course. . . I didn't mean. . .T: I don't want any bullshit.DC: Right. OK I'll drop the letter off here tomorrow around lunchtime.T: I'll be here.T held the door open for me, and I walked through.I went home and sat down to write the letter. It took me many drafts over several hours to find a writing voice that didn't sound like that of a bullshitter. The next day I met T in the lunchroom and handed him the promised letter in an unsealed, university letterhead envelope. T took the envelope from me. "Thanks," he said, looking me straight in the eye. T raised the envelope to his lips, licked and sealed it. "I'll give it to my lawyer, " he said. I was surprised - and disappointed - when he didn't read the letter. "I wrote exactly what I think of you, " I said, "no bullshit. " T ran his thumb over the flap to emphasize the seal, and put the envelope in his pocket. "I don't need to read it, " he said, "I trust you. " "Thanks. . . Well. . . Good luck in court. ""Whatever. . . nothing ttiey can do that I can't handle. I'm my own man. "I suggest that the experience of performance, the pleasure of a Utopian performative, even if it doesn't change the world, certainly changes the people who feel it.-Dolan 2005:19The "Stories and Plays Project" (hereafter SPP) was co-created by nine members of an inner city, streetfront clinic and drop-in centre in Downtown Eastside Vancouver, British Columbia, called the HIV Positive Outlook Program (POP),1 run by Vancouver Native Health Society (VNHS); six university students2; and me, Dara Culhane, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University (SFU).3SPP consisted in 14 four-hour workshops organized around creative practices of sharing food and conversation, storytelling, performance and photography that took place over 10 weeks, April-June 2007. The project culminated in an event that included an exhibit, seven live performance pieces and quantities of food and nonalcoholic refreshment. The objective of SPP was to experiment with processes for creating conditions of possibility wherein university-based researchers and subaltern research participants might experience "ethical engagement."This article describes the context in which the project emerged, reviews how SPP unfolded in practice, and ends with a pause to reflect on surprises I encountered in conducting it and with lingering questions about its potential effects. Theatre artist-scholar Baz Kershaw's (2009) call for "boundless specificity" serves as academic storytelling method. Kershaw writes, "every example is incorrigibly particular... Boundless specificity produces precise methodological opportunities generally and a plethora of insights, understandings, knowings relevant to a wide range of disciplines specifically" (2009:5).I turn to the SPP project three years after it was enacted and from a first-person perspective. In doing so, I am less influenced by popular genres of reflection focused on individual introspection than by emerging work on reflexivity that, following Holmes, I consider "to be more than reflection and to include bodies, practices and emotions"(2010:14). …

Peace Review, 2015

Introducing Therapeutic Nations, American Indian Studies Professor Dian Million describes her wor... more Introducing Therapeutic Nations, American Indian Studies Professor Dian Million describes her work as a “convoluted undertaking” that explores “what ‘power’ is in our times” (3). She offers readers a history of the present through an analysis of the political processes through which the “colonized subject became a victim of historical trauma” (3). Million contextualizes these processes within the emergence of post–World War II International Human Rights law, globalized capitalist expansion, neo-liberal governance, international development programs, Western academic theories, and Indigenous decolonization movements. In particular, Million’s work is informed by, and seeks to be accountable to, Indigenous feminist activism in communities, political organizations, and academies. It is within this context that Million addresses a central problematic: “ . . . the international law that enables Indigenous trauma to appeal for justice is the same sphere in which we articulate political rights as polities with rights to self-determination. I don’t see these as necessarily compatible projects” (3). The book proceeds to explore the potential political consequences of this incompatibility. This is no simple task. Among Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and activists alike, conflicting visions of how the future could or should unfold are currently in debate. The book does, indeed, meticulously document complex entanglements and relationships, and one of Therapeutic Nations’ significant contributions is a comprehensive analysis that rejects indulging in either hypertheorizing or utopian romanticizing. Million succeeds in communicating her subject provocatively in reader-friendly language.

Presses de l'Université Laval eBooks, Aug 24, 2021

Performance matters, May 4, 2015

What if we consider an archive a sensorium, and ourselves as multisensory researcher-beings atten... more What if we consider an archive a sensorium, and ourselves as multisensory researcher-beings attentive to and curious about how embodied and affective experience infuses our practices as meaning makers and knowledge producers? I offer this experimental piece as a response to this question, and as a provocation/invitation to readers.

The panel displays the text "Their Spirits Live Within Us" This is panel 76, section 4

The opm1ons and findings expressed in the Simon Fraser University Sociology and A nthropology Und... more The opm1ons and findings expressed in the Simon Fraser University Sociology and A nthropology Undergraduate Journal are not necessary those of the Simon Fraser Student Society, So ciology and Anthropology Student Union, or the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at S imon Fraser University or their respective Directors and Executives. All material contained herein is Copyright 2014 by the respective authors. Permission to re print or reproduce the material contained herein is prohibited without express written permissio n from the author with the exception of dissemination for non-profit, educational, academic, or informative purposes.

The opm1ons and findings expressed in the Simon Fraser University Sociology and A nthropology Und... more The opm1ons and findings expressed in the Simon Fraser University Sociology and A nthropology Undergraduate Journal are not necessary those of the Simon Fraser Student Society, So ciology and Anthropology Student Union, or the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at S imon Fraser University or their respective Directors and Executives. All material contained herein is Copyright 2014 by the respective authors. Permission to re print or reproduce the material contained herein is prohibited without express written permissio n from the author with the exception of dissemination for non-profit, educational, academic, or informative purposes.

THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES what may first appear to be a relatively mundane event and an apparently co... more THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES what may first appear to be a relatively mundane event and an apparently common-sense project: assembling approximately twenty women (faculty members, graduate students, community-based researchers) in one space (one room in one building at a designated address marked on a map), at one time (from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Greenwich time, according to a twenty-four-hour clock), on one day (a date plotted on the Julian calendar as 23 July 2000). The reason these diverse groups of women got together was to collaborate on designing and planning research intended to document and analyze the relationships between housing and health as created, understood, and articulated by low-income women living in inner-city Vancouver. Specifically, we were gathering to plan a six-week pilot project to test the participatory methodology we hoped to practise during a three-year research project entitled the Health and Home Research Project. Through offering a "thick description"...

What if we consider an archive a sensorium, and ourselves as multisensory researcher-beings atten... more What if we consider an archive a sensorium, and ourselves as multisensory researcher-beings attentive to and curious about how embodied and affective experience infuses our practices as meaning makers and knowledge producers? I offer this experimental piece as a response to this question, and as a provocation/invitation to readers.

The Door is Open: Memoir of a Soup Kitchen Volunteer by Bart Campbell The Heart of the Community... more The Door is Open: Memoir of a Soup Kitchen Volunteer by Bart Campbell The Heart of the Community: The Best of the Carnegie Community Newsletter by Paul Taylor Heroines by Lincoln Clarkes

Réinventer l'ethnographie : pratiques imaginatives et méthodologies créatives, 2021

Anthropologica, Jul 1, 2011

Prologue: A Moment of Ethical EngagementT approached me as I headed out the door after the last m... more Prologue: A Moment of Ethical EngagementT approached me as I headed out the door after the last meeting of the "Stories and Plays Project":T: Is this IT?Dara Culhane: Yep! This is IT.T: Well, now I want to ask you for something.DC: O.K..T: I waited until the project was over. Now, I've done something for you, I want to ask you to do something for me. You can say no if you want to. No strings attached for you or for me.DC: O.K?T: You know I'm going to court next week. . .DC: Yeah...?T: Would you write a letter for me for the sentencing?DC: Oh, sure! I've written tons of those letters. No problem.T: I'm not asking you to bullshit. I want you to write exactly what you really think of me. What I did in this project.DC: Of course. . . I didn't mean. . .T: I don't want any bullshit.DC: Right. OK I'll drop the letter off here tomorrow around lunchtime.T: I'll be here.T held the door open for me, and I walked through.I went home and sat down to write the letter. It took me many drafts over several hours to find a writing voice that didn't sound like that of a bullshitter. The next day I met T in the lunchroom and handed him the promised letter in an unsealed, university letterhead envelope. T took the envelope from me. "Thanks," he said, looking me straight in the eye. T raised the envelope to his lips, licked and sealed it. "I'll give it to my lawyer, " he said. I was surprised - and disappointed - when he didn't read the letter. "I wrote exactly what I think of you, " I said, "no bullshit. " T ran his thumb over the flap to emphasize the seal, and put the envelope in his pocket. "I don't need to read it, " he said, "I trust you. " "Thanks. . . Well. . . Good luck in court. ""Whatever. . . nothing ttiey can do that I can't handle. I'm my own man. "I suggest that the experience of performance, the pleasure of a Utopian performative, even if it doesn't change the world, certainly changes the people who feel it.-Dolan 2005:19The "Stories and Plays Project" (hereafter SPP) was co-created by nine members of an inner city, streetfront clinic and drop-in centre in Downtown Eastside Vancouver, British Columbia, called the HIV Positive Outlook Program (POP),1 run by Vancouver Native Health Society (VNHS); six university students2; and me, Dara Culhane, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University (SFU).3SPP consisted in 14 four-hour workshops organized around creative practices of sharing food and conversation, storytelling, performance and photography that took place over 10 weeks, April-June 2007. The project culminated in an event that included an exhibit, seven live performance pieces and quantities of food and nonalcoholic refreshment. The objective of SPP was to experiment with processes for creating conditions of possibility wherein university-based researchers and subaltern research participants might experience "ethical engagement."This article describes the context in which the project emerged, reviews how SPP unfolded in practice, and ends with a pause to reflect on surprises I encountered in conducting it and with lingering questions about its potential effects. Theatre artist-scholar Baz Kershaw's (2009) call for "boundless specificity" serves as academic storytelling method. Kershaw writes, "every example is incorrigibly particular... Boundless specificity produces precise methodological opportunities generally and a plethora of insights, understandings, knowings relevant to a wide range of disciplines specifically" (2009:5).I turn to the SPP project three years after it was enacted and from a first-person perspective. In doing so, I am less influenced by popular genres of reflection focused on individual introspection than by emerging work on reflexivity that, following Holmes, I consider "to be more than reflection and to include bodies, practices and emotions"(2010:14). …

Peace Review, 2015

Introducing Therapeutic Nations, American Indian Studies Professor Dian Million describes her wor... more Introducing Therapeutic Nations, American Indian Studies Professor Dian Million describes her work as a “convoluted undertaking” that explores “what ‘power’ is in our times” (3). She offers readers a history of the present through an analysis of the political processes through which the “colonized subject became a victim of historical trauma” (3). Million contextualizes these processes within the emergence of post–World War II International Human Rights law, globalized capitalist expansion, neo-liberal governance, international development programs, Western academic theories, and Indigenous decolonization movements. In particular, Million’s work is informed by, and seeks to be accountable to, Indigenous feminist activism in communities, political organizations, and academies. It is within this context that Million addresses a central problematic: “ . . . the international law that enables Indigenous trauma to appeal for justice is the same sphere in which we articulate political rights as polities with rights to self-determination. I don’t see these as necessarily compatible projects” (3). The book proceeds to explore the potential political consequences of this incompatibility. This is no simple task. Among Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and activists alike, conflicting visions of how the future could or should unfold are currently in debate. The book does, indeed, meticulously document complex entanglements and relationships, and one of Therapeutic Nations’ significant contributions is a comprehensive analysis that rejects indulging in either hypertheorizing or utopian romanticizing. Million succeeds in communicating her subject provocatively in reader-friendly language.