Soft Methods from the Seat of Empire: Case Studies of Cultural Research in and Around DC

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Roundtable Format

Abstract

American Studies’ interdisciplinary focus on the cultures of everyday life is one of its strongest features with exciting liberatory possibilities; in this roundtable, we think about alternative research approaches that leverage methodologies of everyday life, in generative response and resistance to imperial regimes of knowledge production. As a group of scholars working with Black and Latinx DC metro area communities and histories, we especially grapple with DC’s perception and role as a central seat of empire, while also seeking to do research in ways that exceed the constraints of this singular narrative and formal culture.

Through quick visual case studies and discussions of our own projects we explore the power, rigor, richness, and political potentiality of drawing together methods for studying the cultures of everyday life, even when our research approaches might be considered by formal institutions to be too slow, ‘biased’ by one's own experience, questionably hyper-relational, or too focused on minutiae. Instead, we think about how building community-engaged projects, studying material cultures of the ephemeral, creating maps of everyday spatial knowledges, and analyzing quotidian off-stage performances can generate altogether different research outcomes that illuminate alternative [/minoritarian?] histories and futures, and ways through even within evolving waves of state violence and erasure. From projects that examine Black women’s scrapbooking practices, to immigrant street vendors’ community economies, to early 20th-century pan-Latinx house parties, to underground radio stations and queer nightclubs, to community farming in local food deserts, to creating home archives / archives via community art pieces, to hand-made public memorialization in the face of state neglect…. we see this as soft work, often feminized and subjugated for its focus on informal, clandestine, relational, decorative, or domestic knowledges, and often dismissed

As the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. is the seat of empire for the United States. The District’s unique position globally has shaped who gets to call the city and its surrounding suburbs home. Although it is home to diverse groups of people, Washington, D.C., is largely imagined as simply the site of the federal government and national institutions and the unheralded people who call the city home and their everyday lives are largely forgotten. We are insisting that these people and their experiences are important.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Panelists

• Dominique Hazzard, University of Minnesota

• Kristy Li Puma, University of Maryland-College Park

• Sarah Scriven, Smithsonian Institute

• Nohely T Alvarez, Georgetown University

• Manuel J Duran Mendez, University of Maryland

• Armonte Butler, Gran Varones

Comments

• Kristy Li Puma, University of Maryland-College Park

• Wanda R Hernández, University of Texas At Austin

Biographical Information

Wanda Hernández is a scholar and cultural worker. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Central American and Latinx Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Hernández’s research interests revolve around the formation of race and ethnic identity among Central Americans through material and visual culture, space and place, and performances. Her manuscript-in-progress examines U.S. Central Americans’ personal archives in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area between 1960–2000. In recent years she has curated exhibitions like Nuestras Historias: Latinos in Richmond and produced community-based theatre, such as Little Central America, 1984.

Kristy Li Puma is DC-based cultural worker and a PhD Candidate in American Studies at the University of Maryland. A DMV local, Kristy’s current research focuses on the history, politics, and world-making practices of DC’s Black and Latinx cultural communities from 1970-2000, in spaces such as underground dance clubs, radio stations, and block parties. As she investigates history with living community members she also curates public conversations and collaborative exhibits at places like local libraries and schools. Prior to graduate school Kristy served for a decade as a high school educator, creating programs to support young people of color in developing and enacting their capacities for personal and collective liberation.

Sarah Scriven is a scholar and educator whose work explores Black feminist intellectual traditions, visual culture, and Black feminist pleasure politics. Her current project, Black Women's Scrapbooks: A Look from Within, examines how twentieth-century Black women used scrapbooking as a mode of self- and community representation, a genre for expressing joy, and a site of knowledge production. Sarah is a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of African American History and Culture. She received her PhD from the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland.

Manuel Duran Mendez is a University of Maryland Ph.D. Candidate (College of Information Studies) whose scholarship focuses on Pan-African information science, African knowledge systems, and reparative archiving. He addresses the gaps in information access related to the African Diaspora by investigating and collecting knowledge resources that reflect Black diasporic contributions to society. He believes that digital and oral history documentation are crucial tools for preserving Black narratives and ensuring future generations have access to their heritage. His scholarship draws from his extensive experience with youth organizing, bilingual public library service, and grassroots oral history archival work. He provides research support for the Mellon-funded 1856 Project Summer Research Institute and serves as founder and director of the DC (District of Columbia) AfroLatino Caucus.

Nohely Alvarez recently graduated with her PhD in Urban and Regional Planning and Design from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her dissertation, titled “Everyday Economies: Narratives and Negotiations of Cultural Economic Practices in Langley Park, Maryland,” focused on how Langley Park epitomizes everyday economies, which involve studying how both informal and formal businesses are fostering translocal communities and creating spaces of care in the face of slow violence and displacement caused by upcoming redevelopment projects. She is currently a postdoc fellow at Georgetown University investigating how immigrant women in Langley Park continue to navigate systemic barriers while understanding how their healing and health networks are shaped not just individually but within interpersonal, community, and institutional relations through digital storytelling and photovoice methods.

Armonté Butler, MPH, is a Black Puerto Rican writer and activist from Washington, D.C. He works at a national nonprofit organization supporting adolescent sexual health initiatives and supporting LGBTQ youth of color and youth people living with HIV to strengthen their organizing and advocacy skills. Outside of work, he serves as the Program Coordinator of Gran Varones, a digital story project that amplifies Black, Queer, and Latinx history through a pop culture list. Armonté also serves on the DC History Center’s Latino/a/x Advisory Group (LAG), a group of community members who advise the DC History Center on how to incorporate the histories of the city's Latino/a/x communities into its programs. He has been named an Honor 41 Awardee, a 2024 Health Hero of the Year Honoree, and a Thriving Under 30: Young LGBTQ+ Trailblazer Honoree. He holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in Global Studies and Gender Studies from Sewanee: The University of the South. Lastly, he was awarded a Master of Public Health with concentrations in adolescent health, health policy, and health advocacy as a Bloomberg American Health Initiative Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Dominique is the resident historian at The Well at Oxon Run, an urban farm and wellness space in Southeast Washington, D.C. They are also a PhD candidate in History at Johns Hopkins University and an incoming Assistant Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota. At The Well, Dominique leads an oral history initiative that centers longtime residents of the surrounding neighborhood, marking Black histories in place in the midst of racialized displacement and reckoning with the ways green spaces are used as tools to advance that displacement. She is also curating a permanent exhibition at The Well that interprets the plantation pasts and futures of the farm’s land through the eyes of local artists. Dominique previously co-curated the award-winning exhibition Food for the People: Eating and Activism in Greater Washington at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum; prior to graduate school she worked in community engagement at a local food justice organization for several years.