Flatlessness

A space meant to elevate a conversation about the book Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

[flatlessness]

Whoa. It’s been a minute since we’ve posted! SO. Team Flatlessness had a solid showing at the AERA annual meeting in San Antonio just this past weekend. In addition to seeing Nick and making a comic or two, we had the opportunity to present our work within the Arts-Based Research Special Interest Group (ABER SIG). It was a pretty excellent roundtable session with four other interesting papers. All in all, it was a terrific experience! Lovely to have the chance to share our scholarship with other folks! AOL

[flatlessness]

Now that the 2015-2016 courses are coming to a close, Team Flatlessness can get back to work. Introducing Team Flatlessness 2-D, soon to be featured in our presentation at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry 2016 (May 18-21)!

What do you think?

[flatlessness]

A few weeks ago, we had the awesome pleasure of hearing Nick speak at Miami University (OH) and then visiting with him afterward. It was wonderful to be in his presence, catch up, and chat about all sorts of things. Plus, crashing the conference was fun, too! 

Since that time, we’ve been building panels for the comic we’re using to present our work at ICQI. We’ve discovered the beauty of non-photo blue pencils, and we’re enjoying the challenge of placing all our ideas together in a cohesive visual piece. AOL

[flatlessness]

This looks pretty awesome. We may need to dabble in the How to Make a Comic Book MOOC that’s about to get underway. AOL

[flatlessness]

All our pleasure, Nick! AOL

[flatlessness]

Our book review of Unflattening was published online today! AOL

[bonsdoodles]

My final project for Comics as a Way of Thinking course with Nick Sousanis.

I wrote a narrative using the communication techniques (through comics) that we studied in class. I only finished 7 pages (of my original 20, then 10; I’m a failure). I included annotated versions of each page explaining my thought process. I will be uploading this soon.

[nathanschock]

Stories too, are a kind of doorway, openings, vehicles to transport us…They let us reach across time and space to share in another’s viewpoint, touch another’s thoughts, and make them part of our own stories. To be clear, by stories, I don’t mean only wonderous tales, but that most human of activities, the framing of the experience to give it meaning.

Nick Sousanis, Unflattening, page 95 (via nathanschock)

[flatlessness]

Off to ICQI

Before the winter break and during the end of the semester hustle and bustle, we received word that our ICQI proposal was accepted. Now the real work begins. Our full abstract is below. We’ll keep you posted on process. Hope to see you there! AOL

[flatlessness]

So, where are we?

While our proposal was not accepted for AERA, we await word on whether or not we’ll be presenting at ICQI. For the ICQI proposal, we focused on one of the “findings” from our AERA proposal--the way in which the team reading of Unflattened caused us to question, dismantle, rebuild, and (again) destabilize our individual educational philosophies. I’ve been thinking about this since I first started reading the book. I’ve been asking: Where do educational philosophies come from? How do we know what we think we know about teaching and learning? Is every educational idea simply a remix? My sense is we’ll keep chasing these questions, as the answers are elusive. Anyways, our ICQI proposal is titled: A Trioethnographic Methods Derive: Educational Philosophies Indelibly Unflattening. I like words, as my flatlessness “teammates” like to say. Can’t you tell?

So, the AERA reviewers were split in their receptions of the work. Two loved it; two didn’t love it. It’s always fascinating and frustrating to “read” the feedback. By “read” I mean look underneath the words and imagine the framings influencing the reviewers’ positions on the work. The take away? Our methods are sound (which is interesting because we’ve been kind of aimlessly wandering around all of the ideas), and the work is important in advancing what we know about trioethnography, but we must situate the process and the findings against/inside the broader cultural landscapes within which are are working (and thinking). I think we’re up for it. 

The prospect of presenting at ICQI has been energy-giving. If accepted, we plan to make a comic (handout), write a paper (paper), and engage in some kind of theatrical reading of that paper (presentation). It won’t be boring, we promise. 

As of right now, we’re actively doing nothing. Well, we’re just not doing things on purpose. Any “work” that happens is random. The co/team-reading persists. My pleasure reading has consisted of tagging along with my “teammates.” For example, this, this, this, this, and this. And I’ve also tried to keep up with what Nick’s class is reading (e.g., this and this). It’s been marvelous. All of these works are poignant for different reasons. And if I look closely, I can see a lineage stemming from Unflattening (topic) and our experiences of team reading it (method). It feels like a class I’m taking, and enjoying a lot. That the team reading persists has “finding”-like qualities, which I think we might be able to situate in observations/literature/extant knowledge about the “pull” of such a thing/phenomenon/community/sensation/intellectual endeavor within a certain cultural context. Like a book club? A thought club? We’ll see what happens.

All for now. AOL

[bonsdoodles]

This drawing is a quick, little introduction we had to make about ourselves. 

The task is to make a “sketch-note-diagram”, but I ended up making mine more visual. Essentially, I wanted to show myself and the different aspects of my life which led me to take the course. To read it, you start from the thought balloon on the very top where I introduce my name, then moving clockwise back to the top. I chose this non-standard flow because I felt like as I grew up, I have become more detached from drawing and telling stories through it, but now I’m back to the beginning as I try to incorporate my old hobbies with my current work. That being said, I think the thought balloons are self-contained enough that you can read it however you’d like.

I also tried to draw symbolically, drawing connections with words written inside the thought balloons and the image slice it’s within.    

[maydayx2-deactivated20180812]

“Drawing, as Masaki Suwa and Barbara Tversky suggest, is a means of orchestrating a conversation with yourself. Putting thoughts down allows us to step outside ourselves, and tap into our visual system and our ability to see in relation. We thus extend our thinking - distributing it between conception and perception - engaging both simultaneously. We drawing not to transcribe ideas from our heads but to generate them in search of greater understanding.” ~ Nick Sousanis, Unflattening

[flatlessness]

I call myself a “bad scholar” because I often do not enjoy reading. It requires a certain amount of patience that I have a difficult time providing depending on the topic, the progression of the story, and the author’s ability to make one forget they are reading. So when I voluntarily read Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland, I surprised even myself. To be entirely honest, I’m obsessed with flatness and have been since reading Nick Sousanis’s Unflattening. I have been baffled at the thought and planning that went into creating something as thought provoking as a graphic dissertation, which knowingly challenges everything we think we know.

Having finished Flatland (a book I jokingly refer to as the first I’ve ever finished) I have been awarded a glimpse into the incredible potential of dimension-focused thought. Written in 1884, Flatland offers up a plethora speech platforms, which one need only shout into the great plane, hoping their message falls on dimensionally capable ears.  

This is a dare, a challenge to take a step down into Flatland, a plunge into Lineland, a dive to Pointland, then back to our comfortable Spaceland to think of the unthinkable Thoughtland.

I challenge you to open up your mind to the possibilities of dimension, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you find. I think Nick was and so am I.

[flatlessness]

A Little Good News.

We recently found out our book review, which was peer reviewed not editor reviewed, was accepted for publication (with some revision) by the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. Woot! The 1000-word parameter was a bit restricting for us, and that came through in the reviewers’ comments. It was suggested that we summarize each chapter (plus interludes) to illustrate the “story” along with the themes/purposes/messages of the book--hence taking the paper over the 1000 word limit--which we plan to do over the next few days. More updates to follow. AOL 

[flatlessness]

These students were ruined by predatory colleges. Now they're getting even.

Over the last few years, America’s for-profit college industry has come under increasing scrutiny, and in some cases, legal action.

Will be teaching with this. Brilliant. AOL

[flatlessness]

It’s been a day of mind mapping. Thoughts are evading words--at least those that follow one another in straight lines and read from left to right. So this morning I mapped out a family tree of visual methods research for a book project, and this afternoon I sketched out ideas for next steps on our work with this project. We await the decision from AERA, and we contemplate a proposal for the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. Might we see you there? AOL

[bkbfcomics]

As a maker, I can tell you that it’s easier to go the talking-head route because you don’t have to come up with something new to draw all the time. But I’m more interested in how you can embody an idea on the page rather than talk about it.

Nick Sousanis in the Paris Review

Come see Nick talk comics and visual thinking at the Brooklyn Book Festival this Sunday!

(via bkbfcomics)