Creative & Short Form Writing
Trailing balloons. 50 Give or Take. Vine Leaves, 2024 (in press).
A swan by any other name. In Ourania’s Orrery of Imagination. Wild Ink, 2023.
Gemini dream. In Ourania’s Orrery of Imagination. Wild Ink, 2023.
Together in they. The Green Shoe Sanctuary, April 12, 2023.
Irena's light. Friday Flash Fiction, March 16, 2023.
Young love matters. Her View from Home, December 31, 2021.
Post-rejection editing. ACES: The Society for Editing, July 13, 2021.
Media-Making Initiatives
Video Modules for Online Courses
Currently, I am out of the field and working in the studio to script/storyboard video modules for online courses, using video and animation. These will be available to facilitate learning in communication, media, and writing courses offered through Cable Creek Publishing. I am not an animator by trade or (much) training, but animation software is increasingly accessible to editors. Luckily, editing is my thing – whether video or text – and the basics of storytelling and editing remain the same for animation as for live-action video.
Community and Social Justice Media
Documentary filmmaking is, for me, an epistemological and creative process informed by the principles of ethnographic research, naturalistic inquiry, and feminist theories of difference, voice, and representation. In my work as a documentary producer, director, and editor, I combine these principles with the use of digital video technologies to uncover and express stories of the human condition, the struggle for equality, and the pursuit of social justice. Through this process, I weave together narratives from people whose voices might not otherwise be heard into a format that facilitates the preservation and diffusion of those voices while simultaneously giving something back to the community from which they spoke. I hope to return to shooting and editing documentaries in the spring of 2023, as they were my first love. But alas, my third love—writing and editing documents—keeps me occupied and takes all my time of late! (My "second love" is my family . . . second only in chronology, not in priority!) I have a number of projects in mind. Thus far, I've spoken to folks about the possibility of using video to help facilitate community media projects in North Dakota, sharing immigrant stories across the generations in Iowa, and promoting community-advocacy street dancing in New Orleans. Closer to home, I'm exploring ways to support women in their small-city business ventures. Nothing is decided, however, so if you've got an idea, I'd love to consider it!
Research In-Progress
Hailed by Hierarchy: Social Media, Implicit Bias, and Artificial Intelligence
Excerpt: "Regardless of the intent of individual users or groups of users, hierarchies of hate and domination imbrue social media in organization, content, and practice. Sadly, the same can be said for numerous activists, scholars, and academicians. For too long, many who would align themselves with the pursuit of justice and equality—including many who call themselves “feminists,” particularly white feminists, or “anti-racists”—have pursued paths to justice that not only fail to challenge the underlying structures of dominating-power but are themselves incarnations of that pursuit. Feminism grounded in racism is not feminist. Anti-racism grounded misogyny is not anti-racist. Any activist stance that purposively benefits from or advocates hierarchies of difference—be they based on gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, abilities, nationality, religion, migration status, or . . .—supports and is supported by the same pulse underscoring organized hate groups. The crises of our time require not just temporary coalitions—sandbaggers drawn together by a flood—they require an evolving embrace of activistic intersectional politics where anti-racism is paired with pro-feminism and damaging hierarchies of difference are vanquished" (copyright 2022, Laura A. Wackwitz).
Hactivism as Protest Rhetoric: The Case for Aaron Swartz
Abstract: "Whistleblowing, digital activism, and idea exchange are integrated components of public protest in a digital world. This case study of Aaron Swartz reveals the importance of that integration and interrogates the rhetorical spaces created by a simple act of protest that became a rallying cry for social change. Despite the potential of the Internet to facilitate the creation and impact of rhetorical protest communities, information exchange in the United States remains far from unfettered. The First Amendment protects freedom of expression from government intervention but does little to ensure the public has access to those ideas once expressed. The American public, therefore, is in the awkward position of funding academic research and scholarship with no expectation of being able to engage published results once vetted and polished through peer-review. There may be, as Jacque Rancière posits, an “equality of intelligences,” but there exists no concomitant equality of access. Aaron Swartz understood this conflict better than most. In 2013, faced with an avalanche of unprecedented federal charges backed by relentless federal prosecution, Aaron Swartz took his own life. Analysis of the rhetoric surrounding the U.S. government’s extreme response to Aaron Swartz demonstrates that the hoarding/isolation of information is not simply a financial arrangement. It hides a deeper truth: concentration of knowledge remains the exclusive providence and private marketplace of an educated, wealthy, powerful elite. Thus, the institutional murder-by-suicide of Aaron Swartz simultaneously fulfilled the function of a public lynching—what Foucault would call a “spectacle”—and a disturbing confession that diversity, equity, and inclusion are sanctioned in the marketplace of ideas only insofar as they support a concentration of power among authorized elites" (copyright 2021, Laura A. Wackwitz).
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