Photo by Patrick Robert Doyle on Unsplash

On March 17-18, 2023, CNLH hosted the inaugural Law & Humanities Writing Workshop at UBC. We hosted 16 graduate students over two days workshop whose projects, themes, methodology, or approaches are at the intersection of law and the humanities. Students had the opportunity to have their work in progress reviewed by peers and professors.

See a gallery of photos from the workshop below and a blog post reflecting on the weekend below.

Academic Vulnerability 

By Emilio Abiusi

Intro:

Graduate students spends much of their life working on their PhDs. Their topic is something they know intimately and often comes from a place of deep personal meaning to them. The student will spend countless hours on their thesis, adapting to new research, rewriting whole sections, and tinkering with sentence structure until the final product emerges; birthed from the mind of the author. Only the trusted are allowed to enter into the private world of a student’s research. To be granted permission to review an unfinished thesis is to gaze into the student’s mind. For a burgeoning academic, presenting an in-progress piece of work takes immense bravery. Bravery to be vulnerable. 

The Workshop

From March 17 to 18, 2023, the Canadian Network of Law & Humanities hosted the inaugural Law & Humanities Graduate Student Writing Workshop. The network invited students working at the intersection of law and the humanities to share their work and receive feedback on their work in progress writing from professors and peers. As one of the research assistants for the network, I had the opportunity to host the two-day workshop. My participation was one of setting up rooms, coordinating catering, and ensuring everyone was well caffeinated. When planning the workshop, the organizers knew that at a very fundamental level, we were asking students to be intellectually vulnerable with one another.

Vulnerability may be one of the bravest things one can do on their intellectual journey. The writer presents their doubts, uncertainties, insecurities, and desires before the reader in the hope that it will be met by compassion, generosity, warmth, and care. For the workshop to be a success, our team needed to create a space where participants would be comfortable to take that courageous leap. Could we craft an environment of academic vulnerability over just two days? 

The workshop was split into two components: the full group sessions, and the individual sessions. The group sessions involved all eighteen members of our group, including students and faculty facilitators. These sessions were focused on activities designed for students to get to know one each other and to become comfortable sharing their academic work. In our opening session, students were asked to reflect and share an answer to one of the following questions:

1. Why have you chosen to write about your dissertation topic? Why now?
2. Why are you the person to write this dissertation?  Do you have a personal investment in your topic?
3. Who is your thesis trying to persuade? Who are you writing for?

Each question was designed to assist the student in revealing the ‘why’ behind their work. ‘Why’ is an intimate question. ‘How?’, ‘what?’, and ‘where?’ are mechanical, cold, and safe. But ‘why’, may result in deeper answer. An answer the student has not yet fully realized or has been able to articulate.

In answering these questions, the students were naturally trepidatious. They were still getting to know one another. Unsure of how much to share, how much to open up, and how safe this place was to be vulnerable in. The opening session served as a warm-up leading up to the core of the workshop: the individual sessions. 

Vulnerability

Attendees were placed in a group with 4-5 students and two faculty facilitators. Prior to the workshop, each student had submitted a piece of their work for review by the group. In the individual sessions every sentence, quote, comma, and citation were considered and discussed. To volunteer one’s work for such scrutiny can be undeniably helpful, but it requires vulnerability. 

It is easier to hide one’s work in progress from the public. But these students chose to be brave. They chose to invite others into their unfinished work. Keeping one’s work to oneself is a retention of control over the work. By sharing that work with others, the work is in part let loose, the idea becomes shared, and the writer releases their grip. 

In the session I observed, one of the students was given a one-hour block for their work to be considered by the group. Each group member then went around analyzing, questioning, and providing feedback on the student’s work in excruciating detail. This process may in some environs descend into a competition of intellectual prowess. But not so here. Rather, what I observed was an exercise in community. 

Each student and faculty had something insightful and compassionate to say about the student’s writing. It was clear that prior to the workshop each participant had taken time to read and understand the student’s project. Every piece of feedback was thoughtful and done with the benefit of the writer in mind. Within this little community of scholars, I saw ideas sharpened, and friendships formed. What more could a graduate student want other than someone to read and seek to understand their work? 

The Benefits of a Law & Humanities Community 

At the closing session of the workshop, the entire group once again formed a circle and shared a little bit about how taking a Law & Humanities approach to their work impacted them over the weekend. One student expressed that this was the first time in a number of years where they were able to feel like themself, as a scholar and an academic. Another expressed how refreshing it was for someone else to have read the work they had been thinking about for years. One of the groups drew a picture of a flower, describing their experience as a beautiful organic experience of growing together, through the small group spaces. Multiple students shared how normally by the second day of an academic conference they are exhausted, but this workshop had the opposite effect: they felt invigorated. The opportunity for vulnerability provided by the workshop ultimately it built a sense of community.

Legal and academic work can be lonely. One is progressing steadily through the dark forest of knowledge on a path only they may tread. Encounters with other sojourners are a welcome reprieve, but they are seldom and rarely expected. A workshop such as this one may have served as an oasis of sorts. A place where fellow students may stop for a while to receive refreshment in the presence of others before setting off back to walk their individual path.  The workshop provided the space for scholars to be comfortable being themselves with one another; sharing their lives and their work. 

Graduate students, by the necessary mechanics of their work must walk their path alone. They must research, write papers, apply for scholarships, submit to journals, network, advertise, create networks, attend conference, meetings, all while being barely paid enough to afford rent! Rarely can they stop to catch their breath, rarer still in the presence of peers. 

Doing a PhD must be exhausting. 

Yet, despite the difficulty, these students chose to be vulnerable, and in doing so they formed connections with their fellows participants. It is only out of a place of vulnerability, where another sees one’s work for what it is when it is incomplete, where they may see what the work truly is, and perhaps, who you truly are. I saw this transformation happen at the workshop. Something special happened when students were academically vulnerable with each other. Relationships were created. Passion was reignited. And a community was formed.