Seminar: Engage in Public Scholarship with Alex Ketchum

Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Time: 10:30am - 12:00pm EST
Location: 626 Kaneff Tower
Register: Limited spots available. RSVP to cfr@yorku.ca

Public scholarship—sharing research with audiences outside of academic settings—has become increasingly necessary to counter the rise of misinformation, fill gaps from cuts to traditional media, and increase the reach of important scholarship. Engaging in these efforts often comes with the risk of harassment and threats—especially for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ communities, and precariously employed workers. This workshop, based on Ketchum's book Engage in Public Scholarship provides constructive guidance on how to translate research into inclusive public outreach while ensuring that such efforts are safer and more accessible. The workshop will discuss practices and planning for a range of activities from in-person and online events, to publishing and working with the media, social media activity, blogging, podcasting, cartoons, and more! This workshop will both address the key challenges and benefits of feminist and accessible public scholarship and provide toolkits for doing this important work.

Since 2018, Dr. Alex Ketchum has been the Faculty Lecturer of the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies of McGill University. She is the Director of the Just Feminist Tech and Scholarship Lab and the organizer of Disrupting Disruptions: The Feminist and Accessible Publishing, Communications, and Tech Speaker and Workshop Series. Her work integrates food, environmental, technological, and gender history. Ketchum's first peer-reviewed book, Engage in Public Scholarship!: A Guidebook on Feminist and Accessible Communication (Concordia University Press, 2022), examines the power dynamics that impact who gets to create certain kinds of academic work and for whom these outputs are accessible. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the trailblazing restaurant Mother Courage of New York City, Ketchum's second book, Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses (2022), is the first history of the more than 230 feminist and lesbian-feminist restaurants, cafes, and coffeehouses that existed in the United States from 1972 to the present. Ketchum's interest in past imaginings of utopia through business creation and the implementation of communications technologies has guided her new research and third book project on historically contextualizing the relationship between feminist ethics and AI. You can find out more about her other writings, podcasts, zines, exhibitions, and more at https://www.alexketchum.ca.