Curating Learning Journeys

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Frontmatter

   PDF-Version jetzt herunterladen

2. folding in

   1. Frontmatter

   2. living, writing, learning

      • Open Access

      Erzsébet Strausz

      Abstract

      Curating Learning Journeys emerges from the quest to recover and reclaim fundamental skills central to academic work and study—such as writing and storytelling—beyond their instrumental and logistical uses, reconnecting us with their creative and communal potential. The chapter, ‘living, writing, learning’, invites us to turn inwards and attune to the richness of the personal and professional archives we carry within ourselves. I locate writing in deep relationality with others and with other practices. I situate learning in plural sites and sensibilities—beyond the familiar aesthetics of disciplinary knowledge practices, opening onto multiple ways of knowing. I contextualize writing-based reflection as a process-oriented, rather than outcome-driven, transformational device both in the IR classroom and as a method of sense-making.

      PDF-Version jetzt herunterladen

   3. new angel

      • Open Access

      Erzsébet Strausz

      Abstract

      The vignette, ‘new angel’, narrates the story of finding voice for this book. I trace pathways of inspiration arising from relations—a conversation with a friend, the making of a paper figure, a series of conceptual associations and continuous personal reflection—culminating in snippets of text and spatial moulding that feel aligned with the lived, living experience of how I process life.

      PDF-Version jetzt herunterladen

   4. pedagogies of the folds

      • Open Access

      Erzsébet Strausz

      Abstract

      This chapter is my writing manifesto and methodological statement. Here, I revisit the trajectories of the experimental writing practice that first gained articulation through the notion of the ‘experience book’ in my PhD. It situates this project, the stakes and politics of writing, the evolving methods of writing as discovery, and the shape this text takes within disciplinary, pedagogical, and ethical considerations. Writing appears as a vehicle for travelling alongside the folds of experience and perception, enabling everyday transformations.

      PDF-Version jetzt herunterladen

3. folding out

   1. Frontmatter

   2. affective landscapes of IR

      • Open Access

      Erzsébet Strausz

      Abstract

      Folding out, we enter pedagogical relations in the IR classroom and beyond. The ‘affective landscapes of IR’ become visible in a collective collage practice with students and faculty, which sought to uncover motivations, challenges, and ways of worlding within the field of International Relations through reflexive prompts. This chapter gives detailed description of the design of the collaging process, revisiting key moments that brought to light the felt dimensions of how we inhabit the discipline, its knowledge forms, and politics.

      PDF-Version jetzt herunterladen

   3. learning about learning

      • Open Access

      Erzsébet Strausz

      Abstract

      Intrigued by the rich intellectual, affective, and imaginative horizons uncovered through the collective collaging, the chapter ‘learning about learning’ sets out to delve deeper into learning journeys. I conduct research interviews with students registered for the course ‘Knowing, Narrating, (re)Writing International Relations’ (KNR), focusing on their educational trajectories and learning experiences in the course, the MA program and International Relations. I seek to map out what blocks and empowers across resonant and equally, discordant realities. I ponder questions around creating representations of ongoing working relationships. I collaborate with a student in discussing a draft version of this chapter as part of a co-creative process. The modality of archipelago writing emerges.

      PDF-Version jetzt herunterladen

   4. curating learning journeys

      • Open Access

      Erzsébet Strausz

      Abstract

      In ‘curating learning journeys’ I continue to listen to the research interviews with students, attuning more to their side comments and minor remarks on how they navigate institutional structures, workloads, and pressures at the university. A comment about ‘mastery’ makes me rethink my pedagogical approach. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s figure of the ‘ignorant schoolmaster’ and insights from critical and feminist curatorial praxis I describe curating learning journeys as a curatorial sensibility in pedagogy and research. Insights from the discourse on curation infuse an evolving ethos of openness, care, and attention to the relational and holistic dimensions of lived, living experience.

      PDF-Version jetzt herunterladen

4. folding over

   1. Frontmatter

   2. letters to authors

      • Open Access

      Erzsébet Strausz

      Abstract

      This chapter introduces a writing practice in which students are invited to write letters addressed to the authors of assigned texts. Over the years, these letters have materialized in various formats—written during class (both online and in-person), or asynchronously as a reflective task completed in students’ own time. The aim is to cultivate a different kind of relationship to text, knowledge, and one’s own sense of agency. By staging an encounter with the ‘author’—whether through the prospect of actual interaction or the imagined presence of their voice on the page—the practice subverts the passivity often associated with academic reading, and refocuses attention on the lived, moment-to-moment experience of making sense.

      PDF-Version jetzt herunterladen

   3. the living document

      • Open Access

      Erzsébet Strausz

      Abstract

      This chapter introduces a pedagogical device that fostered community within online, hybrid, and in-person teaching modalities, while also providing a space for personal reflection. In exploring the power of writing, alongside the guided writing exercises for each seminar theme, we collectively created and nurtured ‘the living document’—a shared, anonymous Google document—by adding brief reflections in each class throughout the course. It offered an opportunity for connection beyond the usual classroom interactions, while also mobilizing affective, embodied personal archives in the process of translating between International Relations and inner relations.

      PDF-Version jetzt herunterladen

   4. writing for writing

      • Open Access

      Erzsébet Strausz

      Abstract

      The writing practices woven throughout the course are designed to facilitate encounters with our own processes of sense-making. Each practice offers a curated pathway to greater awareness of how we inhabit both the academic discipline and everyday life as knowing subjects. ‘writing for writing’ focuses on personal reflection and inner exploration. Guided by questions or prompts framed around the themes of the class, the focus turns inward, towards our affective, biographical connections with the field and how ‘others’, images, and events live within us. This chapter illuminates insights, moments of growth, and realizations, as well as ambiguities, doubts, and challenges, as participants reflect on world politics and their immersion in it through private writing.

      PDF-Version jetzt herunterladen

5. folding back and forth

   1. Frontmatter

   2. writing as transformation

      • Open Access

      Erzsébet Strausz

      Abstract

      Folding over, the perspective shifts to how writing-based reflection modalities and their iterations can engender everyday transformations. ‘writing as transformation’ extends learning journeys beyond the IR classroom, reconfiguring writing-based reflection as an everyday (academic) practice of meaning making and (self-)transformation. It creates a bridge to the online course Political Writing as Transformation, linked to this book, which offers frames and techniques to curate our own processes as we work through challenges or seek inspiration to get started or move forward.

      PDF-Version jetzt herunterladen

6. Backmatter

   PDF-Version jetzt herunterladen