Keeping the Path of Conocimiento Real and Grounded

As I reflect on my program of research, teaching and service in the last three years at UMass Boston, I realize that there is more than one way of facilitating through "the path of conocimiento." Having listened very carefully to others on the Diversity Committee discuss their journeys to conocimiento, I also became aware that it is, indeed, the very diversity of our work in knowledge production, given all our disciplinary strengths and combinations, that contribute to furthering the "urban mission" of our university. I have always felt that the most intellectually stimulating and challenging place to carry out my publicly-engaged work is not at the center of the dominant academic and public discourses but where the in-between space of nepantla and constant transformation is. For many of us who are always crossing disciplinary boundaries and connecting academia and wider publics, we know that nepantla is that bridge, the always-in-transition space, the place where different sides and multiple perspectives can be simultaneously seen and heard. There are concrete accomplishments and real promises in this place of transformation, and often, when we dwell in nepantla so much of the time it has almost become a bridge that we may call "home." It has been a very powerful and rewarding experience to be able to position myself in this nepantla space--in my program of historical research on race, (im)migration and community development located at the intersection of American Studies, ethnic studies, critical development studies and urban public history; in my teaching that emphasizes the integration of theory and practice; and through an unprecedented joint appointment in American Studies and Asian American Studies. But bridges, as Gloria Anzaldua has cautioned, is also 'the most unsafe of all spaces." "You don't build bridges to safe and familiar territories, you have to risk making mundo nuevo, have to risk the uncertainty of change," she adds. During the years I worked at UMass Boston, I have mentored many undergraduate and graduate students and recruited five students from Revere and Dorchester where I previously worked as a community practitioner, while I have also watched even more people "drop out" of UMass Boston, or continue to struggle against overwhelmingly challenging and often unpredictable obstacles in their lives. At the end of the day, I couldn't help but ask myself, What is a good teacher? During this same period, I devoted much of my energy conducting scholarly research, publishing commissioned reports and academic articles and participating in professional conferences, but my active scholarly engagement has also meant that I was giving relatively much less time listening to the daily lived experience of people whom I have counted on most for productive dialogue about my research. I found myself often wondering about a second question that is also central to the unique story of UMass Boston, What is a good scholar? When I prepared for my Fourth Year Review about a year ago, I was reminded of all the inevitable changes in my role and responsibilities that had come with my transformation to be a teacher-scholar at an urban, public and research-intensive university. I wanted to emphasize in my own personal statement that nepantla had been (and still is) the only space where change happened(s). I drew heavily on Gloria Anzaldua's work in writing my personal statement because it was Gloria's revolutionary language and far-sighted vision that had inspired and enabled me to think through the very contradictory context of academic politics. I did not know at the time that the organizers of the Social Theory Forum had in mind Gloria Anzaldua for their conference. So when the STF announced its CFP several months later I was both surprised and excited, to the point that I took it as a mission to convince other members of the Diversity Subcommittee to engage with Anzaldua's last published thoughts. It meant a lot to me, as I went through Fourth Year Review this past year, to know that there is a place for Anzaldua at our university. …