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Over the course of the 2022\u20132023 academic year, the Program in Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship sponsored a weekly dissertation writing workshop that included at least seven regular participants from four departments. On a recent Friday in May, four of the participants presented chapters from their works-in-progress to a symposium audience of faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The RIC dissertation writing workshop was the brainchild of RIC postdoctoral fellow Daniel Cumming and RIC graduate fellow Sheharyar Imran, who organized it with the assistance of Shawntay Stocks, associate director of fellowships and community engagement. The workshop created a reliable, structured space for the writers to support each other and bounce around ideas. Its simple premise was that the only the only way to progress through a multi-stage writing project like a dissertation is to sit down and write, sans distractions. By facilitating a regular meeting, the workshop developed a sense of accountability among its participants, which resulted in everyone making good progress over the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fueled by coffee and bagels at their weekly Monday 9:00am meeting, the participants were writing from different disciplinary perspectives\u2014Anthropology, History, Political Science, and Sociology. But all shared a set of thematic interests that match the key problematics of RIC\u2019s work, including racism, colonialism, migration and borders, social movements, carceral power, and the articulations of race and class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Workshop participant Steph Saxton (Political Science) noted, \u201cThe writing workshop provides a structured community to stay on task, commiserate, and share work during the dissertation phase. It\u2019s been a great, interdisciplinary space to write.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n