I was awarded a promotion to full profession in Spring 2018 to take effect in August 2018 at San Jose State University – the institution where I have spent my entire career. It’s one of the 23 California State University campuses and the largest higher ed institution in the United States. We primarily serve first generation college students with a lot of SJSU’s students transferring to our campus from our local community colleges.
How did I get here? It’s been 18years since I arrived to what seems like a completely different campus culture and atmosphere than it is today.
It’s January 2023. I’m at only my second live, in-person conference since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, it’s the Modern Language Association annual convention – the behemoth where I get to bump into my old pals and serendipity prevails. The convention hallways are rife with mask-covered faces that I’ve really, really missed these past 3 years. Other than the masks, the biggest change is that most everyone has moved off of Twitter, where we usually had very engaging intellectual conversations across panels that made it feel like the academic universe wasn’t so gargantuan and cold-hearted. And, this year, it’s in San Francisco – just a 45-min drive from San Jose where I’ve been stationed for the last 18 years. Giving everything I have. Volunteering for more service than I could handle. Killing myself every year to “do good.”
Despite having been in the same institution for all of my professional career, I still carry a vast curiosity for everything. I race triathlons in order to meet people from all walks of life. I attend conferences in far flung places to ensure that my scholarship isn’t myopic, white, colonial. During the pandemic, when I couldn’t travel to a triathlon to race with my endurance community and partner that travel with giving a talk at some super cool audience of colleagues (mostly self-funded), I resorted to outright traveling with a run adventure company that included cultural learning along with running through unimaginably beautiful vistas to hear bells tolling in a small town up in some far-away mountains. It was exquisite. And the first vacation that I ever took since starting into academia.
But, here I am back at the MLA and not having such a great day. That lasted all of 2 panels until I bumped into a beloved friend who I haven’t seen in a very long time. And, she immediately reminded me why I’m in this game of academia despite the overwhelmingly disappointing news that I received this morning. News that directly relates to the advancement of my career. That would have been a reward for all of my loyalty to my institution. All I’ve been thinking since receiving that news is how the University has betrayed me. That administrators don’t care.
She reminded me that they don’t.
She’s right.
I know this. All too well. From two decades of swimming around, under, past, and through institutional morass. I should know better.
In an effort to advance my understanding of the institution, I had an opportunity to shape my leadership vision recently.
In thinking about how I wanted to articulate what I’ve been doing through Digital Humanities, Digital Pedagogy, and more recently, Public Humanities, I bumped into Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s draft of her latest project, Leading Generously. I’ve long been a fan of Kathleen’s work and used Generous Thinking in conjunction with the HumetricsHSS values-based initiative to create the mission for the initiative that I have created and lead as Director of Public Programming for the College of Humanities & the Arts, H&A in Action.
There’s a learning curve to be where I am (and undeniably in a position of privilege at this point). I’ve spent a lot of time making space for other people but have found that my position as a full professor means that often people don’t reciprocate that, thinking instead that my privilege is already enough space. This has resulted in, for instance, being pulled from edited collections in favor of making space for other voices or failure to provide peer review feedback on an article submission because editors thought I would be insulted.
I realized that others don’t know to make space for me – that I need this generosity, too. So, I’ve been more specific of late. But, I’ve made a small error – in this new position, I’ve been using “we” instead of “me” to articulate and claim credit. My thought was that “I’m doing it for the college, the university, the public good” and that collaboration makes us much more powerful as a community in what we want to accomplish.
This is the error that I’m really coming to grips with right now:
“Our institutions will not, cannot, love us back. However much we sacrifice for them, they will never sacrifice for us.
If I don’t stand up to articulate the invisible labor to create a college-wide initiative, no one else will. If I keep volunteering for extra intensive service because no one else is volunteering, the University will keep inviting me to the table. If I don’t insist on resources to help me do my job, the University is happy to let me self-consume. If I don’t speak up about ethical breaches by other units on campus, the University is happy for my silence. If I don’t push for better conditions so that other faculty don’t fear for their futures, the University is thrilled to have me as an automaton.
If I take the University at its word to empower and train anyone who’s ready for administrative roles, I should look at the broken promises over the last 20 years.
I’ve survived the University in spite of its dangling carrot that never comes close enough to grasp.
After all, I’m only an employee of a large, urban public university that just doesn’t love me.
Get over it.
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See: Agate, Nicky, Rebecca Kennison, Stacy Konkiel, Christopher P. Long, Jason Rhody, Simone Sacchi, and Penelope Weber. “The Transformative Power of Values-Enacted Scholarship.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications vol. 7, no. 1, December 7, 2020, pp. 1–12.
See: Mark Sample’s remarks re intellectual leadership and professional development from a panel at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention 2023.
When former President Mary Papazian took over SJSU, she instilled in the entire university a new way to codify and value different forms of research, scholarship, and creative activity (RSCA). Every tenure-line faculty member who was already pursuing a RSCA agenda could apply and be awarded a course release each semester for 5 years (with renewals) as long as they make progress on their agenda.
This opportunity came up in Fall 2018 while I was on sabbatical. I proposed an ambitious project that also rolled my Digital Humanities, and now Public Humanities, expertise into a literary-period specific research project while also highlighting my ongoing Digital Pedagogy work. The output or remnants of that project used to be “what did you publish?” Now, with the metrics being determined each year by our faculty-led College Committee on RSCA, we have been able to define the terms of what is “scholarship” or “research” ourselves. The metrics are revised each year by this committee in consultation with faculty in the college. And, I have to say, this has been quite successful!
In addition, SJSU has a wildly effective shared governance Academic Senate. About 15 years ago, the Committee on Professional Standards started trying to change the retention, tenure, and promotion (RTP) guidelines. We are unionized. So, once those new rules were passed in 2015 (finally!), we are locked into them — S15-8 was triumphant, but also constantly open to revision as necessary by the Academic Senate. As the Chair of the College RTP Committee, I took my role seriously the last 2 years and worked with full professors who also found this heavy committee work to be incredibly rewarding — we stuck to the language of the policy in all of our decisions and written reviews before sending the dossiers to the dean and then over to the University RTP Committee. With these guidelines, candidates achieve a particular level in each of the 3 primary categories: Academic Assignment (which is more than teaching); service; and RSCA. Below is a handy chart with language taken directly from the policy language to help our committee conversations have immediate reference to the policy. The mandate of this policy is to avoid over-reliance on student evaluations, do more than count number of publications, and reward faculty for service.
2.3.5 Scholarship of Engagement. Similar to professional achievements, the scholarship of engagement requires the application of expertise and/or talent grounded in the candidate’s discipline or interdisciplinary fields. Achievements that do not require such expertise and/or talent shall be evaluated under the category of service. This form of scholarship engages significant problems, needs, issues, and reforms in the professional, academic, local, or broader public/global communities.
–ENACTED FALL 2021
And this year, our incredible team on the Academic Senate’s Committee for Professional Standards acknowledged the work of many of our faculty to create a more equitable environment on our campus and crafted Amendment G “To include within the category of Scholarly/Artistic/Professional Achievement, activities that specifically enhance inclusion, educational equity and achievement in the surrounding and broader communities” – an amendment that has been approved & signed by SJSU’s Interim President, Stephen Perez on April 13, 2022 to be enacted Fall 2022.
In Fall 2021, our College RTP Committee reviewed 21 dossiers — some were requesting tenure and promotion to associate professor, others promotion to full professor, some vying for early tenure and promotion, and others were submitting their third year review for feedback and retention as assistant professor. TWENTY-ONE.
It doesn’t seem like a lot for eight committee members to review, but each of these digital dossiers is jam-packed with years’ worth of career progress, all of which we read very closely. Our Committee, in an effort to move away from quantification of student evaluations or number of publications as a way to articulate success, conforms to S15-8 requirements in writing 3,000-word holistic reviews of these dossiers. We don’t have to author 3,000-words, but considering that our RTP culture is shifting slowly and some levels of faculty review still rely on quantification, we find it necessary to be so bold and recognize everything that the faculty member offers (and identifying where there might be some lack in order to help).
I learned how to do this, this style of value metrics, from a generous HumetricsHSS workshop in Fall 2018. That workshop not only gave me a method for voicing the value of my own multi-disciplinary work, but also emboldened me to take a path to value SJSU’s S15-8 RTP Policy. The workshop (and its leaders) influenced me to not only serve on College RTP, but also to Chair it to ensure that we (College of Humanities & the Arts) were truly valuing faculty contributions according to S15-8….which, really, is a mirror for what HumetricsHSS teaches 😉
Full circle
I’ve been completely immersed in my new role this year as Director of Public Programming and creating H&A in Action (with lots of success!) and haven’t even posted anything since last year’s #dayofdh2021. Reading #academictwitter has fallen to the wayside while I work on funding strategies, community engagement, and crafting Public Humanities (with a heaping mound of Digital Humanities) for the College of Humanities & the Arts with a wonderful team of colleagues and community partners.
Everyone once in awhile, though, I catch someone requesting on Twitter a model for all of what I’ve described above. And, I keep responding that SJSU has a venerable and enviable position as a unionized, state university with an admirable (now) RTP policy that has built-in plasticity.
We’re also building a new NEH-funded Digital Humanities Center that’s more than “humanities.” I personally went to every event I could during the pandemic to hear about faculty RSCA projects — and I amassed a spreadsheet of those projects and queried those who do some form of digitally-inflected RSCA or pedagogy to invite them to list their work with our library’s faculty DH page. In one year, we amassed more than 60 projects by SJSU faculty, students, and staff. SIXTY!
This is a massive feat for one reason: There’s no way for SJSU or even California State University DHers and DH-adjacent to find each other. So what do we do? We build those pathways ourselves. There’s 2000 faculty at SJSU. Give us some time.
Even more exciting: Stay tuned for news about a CSU DH-wide initiative! Can you imagine it? TWENTY-THREE CSU campuses of DHers coming together — massive!
The irony is that I’m proofing our co-authored article (with Rebecca Frost Davis) for one of the Debates volumes about the rigors of doing Digital Humanities in an under-resourced university. With the pandemic, the article has been floating around in various forms of draft for the last 3 years. Rebecca and I write from our own positions instead offering a one-size-fits-all DH. The pessimism I express in this article has inspired me, though. I’ve always taken to heart: “Be the change you want to see.” (Thanks, Graduate Center, CUNY for that lesson!)
So, I did.
I dug into the red tape that was holding back DHers and others who are doing really interesting, engaging work and ran straight into the bowels of university muck. It’s not pretty in there, but I found others who are doing fantastic red-tape slashing work on my campus. And voices are being heard to make change.
Go ahead – take a look.
It’s the university I wanted to work at in 2005.
I’m very happy to be contributing to our potential for anyone we bring on, hire up, and advance forward.
Last year, we were DHing it up with everyone else who breathlessly converted to online pedagogies within a week with the expectation that all would be back to normal by April…or…May? Surely by May. Here we are more than a year later. Day of Digital Humanities this year and April 29 followed on some extraordinary about Digital and Public Humanities at San Jose State University. I captured the day (and some of my perpetual exhaustion) over on Twitter #dayofdh2021 and archive them here for posterity along with the last 5, 7, 8 (?) other instantiations of Day of Digital Humanities from years past.
So many irons in the fire…and they’re all infrastructure building under the umbrella of Public Humanities, but really is everything I ever learned from #dh
First up, a little Google Forms, spreadsheets, ontologies, and curating people— Katherine D. Harris (@triproftri) April 29, 2021
so, the Dean, in the face of dropping enrollments and the pandemic budget shortfall, saw a way to pump up this position & turned me into a Director of Public Programming – starts in the Fall, officially https://t.co/EMQSz2wlgw#DayofDH2021— Katherine D. Harris (@triproftri) April 29, 2021
We’re ramping up for @NEH_Challenge fundraising to support the NEW Digital Humanities Center @SJSU_HA@sjsulibrary (hmm, shd create a Twitter acct for that!) – so, I’m curating faculty from all disciplines — bc we have a boatload of faculty who already do DHy stuff! #DayofDH2021pic.twitter.com/OMLzhWXQ5V— Katherine D. Harris (@triproftri) April 29, 2021
This means I attended *every* virtual event over the last year to curate faculty research projects – collaborate w/our fabulous librarians on how to collect, collate, represent faculty work #DayofDH2021pic.twitter.com/YtyjffWYW1— Katherine D. Harris (@triproftri) April 29, 2021
But, first, we collaborated on how to organize those multi-disciplinary faculty projects.
Disciplines? No. Creates silos Types via #DH@Wikipedia def? No. Not capacious
I’ve spent the first 2 hours of this morning investigating the self-determined categories by faculty & emailing to suggest different categories (while also explaining the difference).
1) Collects: curates faculty DHy projects 2) Community: creates a single web page for faculty to see others who are doing similar work or who are just engaging tech/dig methods …..[+]#DayofDH2021— Katherine D. Harris (@triproftri) April 29, 2021
[+] 3) Educate: Faculty see how capacious an @sjsu specific #dh can be 4) Promote: alert potential donors about how capacious our version of #dh is 5) Disrupt: @sjsu#dh includes research, pedagogy, meta-critique, and projects – *our* kind of #dh *in* Silicon Valley#DayofDH2021— Katherine D. Harris (@triproftri) April 29, 2021
Also today: revising proposal for @NEHgov grant for Humanities Initiatives @ HSI to help @SJSU_HA faculty integrate public programming events into curriculum by helping them collaborate on interdisciplinary assignments w/a partner outside H&A#DayofDH2021— Katherine D. Harris (@triproftri) April 29, 2021
All activities are based on key concepts from *Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities*! https://t.co/WIxzEZ4bb6
With monthly roundtables by curators of keywords/pedagogical artifacts https://t.co/DS7jQjyfs8
Also (did I mention that gig as Dir, Public Programming starts in Fall?!)
Anyway Also today: another simul proposal — @NEHgov American Rescue Plan Humanities Orgs — 14 days to write 5pp proposal for ALL humanities @sjsu ! https://t.co/6uy2zWmR8y
…and that brings me to another infrastructure building small portion of this giant grant proposal — collaborating w/ another @calstate campus on something…bigger…can’t say much now bc we’re still thinking about it…but, we’re dreaming beyond just #dh@sjsu#DayofDH2021— Katherine D. Harris (@triproftri) April 29, 2021
There are 23 @calstate campuses — how much #dh powerhouse can we become if we unify? 🙂
And create a #dh stronghold that doesn’t replicate research-intensive institutions’ versions of #dh — but instead a #dh for the communities we serve #DayofDH2021— Katherine D. Harris (@triproftri) April 29, 2021
It’s 9:30am here. Working from home means I spend 30mins situating the girls (Beatrice & Gracie kitties) before diving into working. Work that is so rewarding but not flashy or visible.
Ok, shew. I think Inbox:1 will stay that way for a bit. Flurry of emails for #DayofDH2021 and now the 2nd virtual mtg @sjsu 1) about the Fall/masks/campus return and 2) recognition of student & faculty awards …while I email w/faculty about listing their DHy projects.— Katherine D. Harris (@triproftri) April 29, 2021
Hoping to clear my decks so I can finish revising this @neh proposal and start the routing process on Monday (for just this one!) #DayofDH2021
Hard cut off for the day is a promise to go for a run at 5pm in the hills!— Katherine D. Harris (@triproftri) April 29, 2021
Today, Dean Shannon Miller made public my move into being the Director of Public Programming for the College of Humanities and the Arts at San Jose State University. It’s a big, bold move, but the work really encompasses what we’ve already been doing with our live event programming initiative for the last 3 years. It’s taken a Dean with a BIG VISION to see the possibilities for pumping up current initiatives through Public Humanities and Digital Humanities methods.
I’ve mentioned a few times this social annotation assignment over the past year of #pandemicpedagogy — it’s been the best DH-y assignment without really being Digital Humanities. (If you’re using Canvas to set up this assignment, here’s how you do that (in Canvas but should be public).
Students in this required course (upper division English majors) have to grapple with a variety of critical theoretical models in order to articulate 10 different ways of analyzing one particular text throughout the semester (Heart of Darkness, and here’s why). Also, these social annotations were one method to build community and get students interacting with each other when we turned to completely online teaching (as of March 9, 2020). The assignment is embedded through Canvas (with Hypothes.is as an external tool that’s added via our eCampus approval) and uses a pdf (stored on my SJSU Google Drive) of the article from a subscription database. We look at examples of what additive means and try to steer clear of writing a formal essay: be generous with each other and the text, explore your ideas, what makes you curious? Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s work, Generous Thinking, has been on my mind alot lately; it’s been important to bring that to my students and their work as well.
The deeper we get into the semester, the better these get. We go over how to read complex literary criticism: first paragraph, last paragraph, topic sentences, then wade in! But, I spend the first few weeks responding to their annotations before the due date to help them perform more than definitions or attempting to be “right.”
It’s an intense exercise because I’m commenting on ~25 annotations prior to the due date and then grading 75 annotations each week. During the pandemic and lockdown, though, it’s the one assignment that has genuinely built upon online community in a way that showcases their intellectual explorations very well. One student told me that with the progress of each week of this course, she feels smarter just from assignments like these and our one synchronous meeting.
One element to note if you’re using Canvas: a rubric can be added to the assignment, but do it before designating the assignment as using an external tool. You won’t be able to see the rubric in the view of the assignment, but you’ll be able to see it in Speedgrader. Also, submission date, for some reason is always Dec 2000. Even if they just open the assignment tool, it gets marked as submitted. Letting them know all of this up front stemmed a lot of panicked emails to me.
Week 6 Feminist & Gender Theory – JHU Annotation for “Gender Theory”
Each week, each critical model is accompanied by articles from the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism (requires log-in). Since reading theory can sometimes be challenging, we are going to work together to unpack the theory in this article and explore its relevance for applying it literature and other texts by using the tool, Hypothes.is, to create social annotations.
This is the first time we’re all using Hypothes.is. If there are questions or bumps with the tech, post a question over in Instructor’s Online Office.
How to Use Hypothes.is – The Tech Stuff
Before beginning your annotations, watch this video on how to work all of the tech in order to leave an annotation that can be seen by everyone in class.
With the Hypothes.is tool, there are 4 kinds of annotations that you may add to our reading :
Highlights (private to you only)
Annotations
Page Notes
Replies
Annotations and replies are the types of annotations that we are using for this assignment. Take a moment to look at the “Illustrated Taxonomy of Annotation Types” to help you understand the difference and what these will look like in the Annotation screen before proceeding any further. (Click on “Watch Screencast.”)
Now that you have some tech help on using Hypothes.is, you’re just about ready to start adding some annotations and replies.
BUT FIRST, read what you’re required to write in those annotations and replies.
What Goes into an Annotation and Reply?
For this assignment, you will add at least three (3) annotations to each article. Once a concept or key point or phrase or sentence has been annotated, you may not add another annotation.
These are the 3 types of annotations/replies that are required:
Annotation Type #1: Help explain the text by asking questions about confusing parts then looking up the answers. You can link out to other resources, thus creating a network of information. Avoid simply asking “what is this?” Connect the annotation back to the key point in the sentence or paragraph.
Annotation Type #2: How do you see a point about this critical model being applied to any literary text (be specific)? Feel free to refer to texts you’re reading in your other courses, too.
Annotation Type #3: Engage in discussion of the article by responding to someone else’s annotation. The response should be additive and not simply an agreement. If you annotate early, you may need to return and add more later (more than a 👌😏👍🏼).
Before choosing a sentence or phrase (don’t do a whole paragraph!), read this “Annotation Tips for Students” and heed its advice:
Select text carefully for annotation;
Annotations should be additive (<—-super important!!);
Make use of the toolbar to create formatting to emphasize important points; and
Use of links and images.
To Get to the Hypothes.is Annotation Page
In order to start your Hypothes.is annotations for this week’s reading(s), scroll down to the end of this page and click on the bar “Load Week 2 xyz – JHU Annotations into a new window.” I enabled this feature because working on the annotations from this assignment renders a very small window that’s difficult to read.
Grading
Each annotation is worth 5points and is awarded based on the ability to highlight a key/main point, articulate a well-thought out plan for applying to literature, engage the conversation of another student through the annotations.
No need to use complete sentences or formal writing here. However, each annotation should be substantive and additive, which means that it needs to be more than a “I agree” or “good job.” For the full 5 points, annotations #2 & #3 need to push or challenge the ideas being offered and provide links to other materials that deepen the discussion.
Attached is the rubric used to grade these annotations
Citation: This assignment adapted from Rebecca Frost Davis’ “Digital Reading with Hypothes.is” Assignment, St. Edward’s University (2020).
triproftri 