How I Got My Dissertation Topic | Part 2
Here is Part 2 of the short presentation I gave on my dissertation chair’s Student Panel on How I Got My Dissertation Topic. I’m rolling out some of the tidbits I shared for anyone here beginning their #phdjourney or any new followers who don’t know me well. If you missed Part 1, check it out here!
My journey towards my Ph.D has been tumultuous, beginning just a couple weeks after I was sexually assaulted. I’ve been really surprised at how the Transformative Studies Program & larger Transformative Inquiry Department at California Institute of Integral Studies treated me as a whole person, even when I wasn’t able to be as present for my studies and colleagues as I would have wanted to.
During my 2 years of coursework in the program, I was able to continue to explore the philosophical theories, dance, video-making, writing, drawing, social justice, psychology, found object art installation & spiritual practices that gave me the resources & tools I needed to feel like a whole person for myself.
I slowly began to remember why I fell in love with existentialism in my 20s, with anti-racism & racial identity causes, with understanding what it means to be a human being & the nature of relationships, with art-making & self-construction, & with this strange novel by Milan Kundera called The Unbearable Lightness of Being, particularly one of the main characters, Sabina, and the bowler hat she wears on top of her head!
As transdisciplinary scholars involved in creative inquiry, we have a diverse, multifaceted & unique way of putting different subjects & interests together to create something new! To have the institutional, faculty & staff support in creating my own transformation validated my experiences as a student & has been healing in itself, especially after the institutional racism & trauma that shattered me as an undergraduate student in the early to mid 2000’s.
TSD has allowed me the space & time I needed to grow as a person & feel motivated to continue with my dissertation inquiry: How does art enable a living expression of a multifaceted and whole self?
May it nurture your own evolution & the evolutions you’ll go on to create in our world with light & liberation!
