The Sixth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry

Day 1

Today I set out for The Sixth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. My morning began at 6am when my mother drove me to the airport. Traveling from Boston to Chicago, I then had to spend a good 3 plus hours in the bus station waiting for my ride to Champaign. Here I thought I’d grab a deep-dish pie to inaugurate my arrival to Chi-town. Little did I know that what I was downing as a mid afternoon snack, a Pizza Uno single serve deep dish, was once voted the most unhealthiest pizza in the United States.

I felt sluggish and bloated after too much sodium so spent the bus station afternoon tucked away in a corner watching Veronica Mars on my laptop. What did we do before wireless Internet?

My bus took off at around 4 p.m. and all of these memories came pouring in of taking buses in Mexico—choosing my favorite seat to the right of the bus driver so that I could see out the front window; being too cold from the air conditioner; watching various types of scenery pass by and by.

Back in the Midwest, what had felt like hours upon hours of farmland and franchise, I arrived to The University of Illinois.

I checked into my on-campus housing which, disappointingly, had no wireless connection in the room! There went my hopes of watching Glee this week.

The University of Illinois impressed me. It’s a huge college town with tons of stores, shops, but also a lot of interesting culture and a feel of community.

The theme of this years program was entitled Qualitative Inquiry for a Global Community in Crisis where, founder of the event Norman Denzin states, attendees would have the opportunity to share experiences, problems and hopes concerning their conduct of critical qualitative inquiry in this time of global uncertainty. For the next few days I got to hear presenters discuss various methods, projects, and research related to topics of poverty, academic freedom, researcher safety, indigenous human rights, human rights violations, torture, political violence, and justice as healing.

I am excited and hope to get some ideas for my own dissertation which, I am hoping by next year, I will have a clearer idea on what I will focus on.





Day 2

Today’s sessions were dedicated to works exclusively presented in Spanish, Portuguese, and Turkish. I got to hear students, professors, and researchers from countries such as Chile, Argentina, Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, and also Brazil. Themes ranged from qualitative research with diabetes patients, to autoethnographic research of natural disasters in Chile, to participatory action research with indigenous Colombians.

In all it was a very interesting day and I got to practice Spanish with many of the people in attendance. In particular, I enjoyed a Spanish speaking lunch with a Ph.D. student named Laura, and her boyfriend Oscar, from Galecia, Spain. I felt an overwhelming sense of pride when a Colombian man told me that I speak Spanish with a Mexican accent!





Days 3 and 4

These past two days at the conference were so inspiring. Yesterday I attended a workshop with Norman Denzin on Performance Ethnography. We broke up into groups to perform moments of tension where race, class, and gender have intersected in socially situated moments in our lives. We were to particularly concentrate on experience, post 911, in an airport. I worked with a group of women—two from Chile and one from Ecuador. Their experiences involved suspicious interactions between themselves and airport security- questions regarding their traveling, their professions, the validity of their research, and their intentions in the United States. It went so far as the guard having to call the Chilean embassy to see if qualitative research really existed in their country. My own story was much different. I performed a scene that took place in Oaxaca immigration office and how easy it was for me to live and work in Mexico without questions. How this is so contradictory to the immigrant experiences that take place here in the United States.

I was also in the audience of some great panel presentations on such topics as race, fathers, abuse, death, memory, protest, and urbanization.

I had the great opportunity to have some good conversations over beers with my new friends from Spain and my colleagues Hari, Ellen, Tim, and Dawn from UMASS as well.





Day 5

To sum up my time at the congress, I have been moved. I saw some powerful, funny, humbling, serious, intelligent, sweet, inspiring work by professors and students so ethereal they seem like movie stars, yet so human I could share a slice of watermelon at a Midwest style cookout with them.

My favorite moments—

A panel on fathers and sons
Ron Pelias
Meeting Bryant Keith Alexander
Dancing to Zydeco music
Cynthia Dillard
Beers with Laura and Oscar
Writing my FM3 experience in Denzin’s workshop
A panel on writing and relationships
Coffee and banana bread breakfasts at the Union café

I am excited to return to this congress again next year where I will definitely present a paper. I have a full year to work on it so I hope I can come up with something good.

Now I return to Chicago on a three-hour bus and continue on plane back to Boston. Long day awaits. Feeling I know more. Feeling I know nothing. Feeling pretty good about that.

Shape Up

Today I took my pup to Riverside's exclusive Poodle Palace to get his first haircut. He walked in a shaggy mess and out a type of Boxer, Pug, seal/lion cub hybrid. Here are some photos of Lemon with his esthetician just before and just after the shape up.

The Night before Summer

I feel that tonight is the last night of finishing out the first year of my doctoral program. I have finished all the papers, projects, and presentations; I went to all the end of the year parties and events for my department; I just logged my final bibliographic annotation to Foucault's The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, my last self-assigned reading for the school year. I am ready for this summer.

Tomorrow I head back to Rhode Island to begin summer vacation. I hope not to jinx myself but I feel this will be a much improved upon summer than last year. To be honest, I spent about 95% of last July and August...and ok September, October, November, and December, hurting over the end of a long relationship.

I'm not all better...but I'm getting there.

I will be heading to Chicago at the end of this month to attend The Sixth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry at The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. There are hundreds of intelligent, dynamic, thought-provoking people presenting their work, which I hope will be inspiring for my own studies. I am also partaking in a Performance Ethnography workshop led by Norman Denzin, a man I have only heard and read the best things about.

I will return from the congress and soon after leave for Sanremo, Italy for the entire month of June. I will be teaching English workshops here, as well as living with a host Italian family. My nights and weekends are free to travel. As for right now my only real must see in Italy is Venice, with the possibility of Rome as well. Anything else that comes up, as long as it involves Italian food, espresso, gellato, outdoor cafes and wine, I am good to go.

When I return from Italy I will head back to Amherst to begin what is called an Intensive Intermediate Spanish course offered at my university. Although I did acquire a bit of Spanish living in Mexico, I have never been formally instructed in the language. I think knowing all the formalities of Spanish will be really beneficial for my dissertation.

My brother and his wife will also be visiting in July; riding my bike; my very good friend Fatima will be moving back to NYC; cookouts; I get to meet my friend Kerri's baby boy; watching Veronica Mars and Glee; Amy is getting a new apartment; my puppy is getting his first haircut; the beach; I am looking forward to all of these things as well.

As I said, this night marks a special night of completion for me. When I started this doctoral program I was an absolute wreck. I feel pretty grounded these days and that speaks more than words on a page can say. I am congratulating myself for a school year well done and for making it through a tough one at that.

I am going to end this blog entry by quoting the great musical artist Will Smith, "give me a soft subtle mix and if ain't broke then don't try to fix it and think of the summers of the past adjust the base and let the alpine blast pop in my CD and let me run a rhyme and put your car on cruise and lay back cause this is summertime.

Pasta Experiment 2: Un tazón de tomates y jalapeños

I am fortunate that although I no longer reside in Mexico, I can still enjoy many of the same dishes there due to the availability of ingredients here in the USA. This is particularly true of chiles. I've found that even in western Massachusetts I can still get dry and fresh chiles de arbol, chipotle, serano y jalapeño.

I am a particular fan of jalapeños and am able to find a reason for eating them at nearly every meal. There are many great towns and villages in Mexico named for this chile, my favorite being Xalapa de Veracruz (pronounced Jalapa as in jalapeño). It is a great university town with cool air, great food, mountains, and Olmec ruins close by.

This dish I prepared tonight in made of pureed tomatoes, sauteed onion and garlic, olive oil, salt, and elbow macaroni. The essential ingredient that makes this bowl of ordinary pasta complete are jalapeños escabeche or pickled jalapeño.

Pasta Experiment 1

School is unofficially out for the summer and, not used to the freedom, I find myself doing odd things like reading books outdoors for pleasure and dressing my dog up like ALF (see 277). I have also begun a new experimentation phase with cooking.

Today I made an amazing Greek influenced pasta dish. It had a lot of sauteed garlic, shrimp, and artichoke heart, some tomato, a splash of lemon, some oregano, salt, and fresh parsley. Mixed in some angel hair and topped off with crumbled feta cheese.

Really good. Really easy to make.

“Twenty years ago if you were going to be a cook, it was because you didn't make it in the army. It was the last stop before you were on the street.”

Mario Batali

227

Monday afternoons Lemon and I often reenact old TV shows of the 80s and 90s. Today was 227. He insisted he play Pearl because he likes to keep an eye out on strangers who pass the apartment and, I am finding, he likes to keep well caught up on the Amherst neighborhood gossip. I started out playing Sandra but found the high heel shoes and pitch voice difficult to carry past two episodes. I switched to the Marla Gibbs character Mary Jenkins about halfway through our rehearsal. She was a much more sensible woman.



Here are pictures of Lemon and I acting out the episode when the 227 tenants all go to Atlantic City for a Luther Vandross concert for Pearl's birthday. Instead of a birthday cake I put a little wax candle in a dog biscuit.