As part of a larger interdisciplinary arts-based research course, we engaged in walking as a material and relational inquiry in order to disrupt privileged and normalized understandings of class, race, settler colonization, and narratives of othering (Springgay & Truman, 2018). Borrowing Jasbir Puar’s (2012) frictional analysis, that brings together intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) assemblage, each of the walks sought to “foreground the mutually co-constitutive forces of race, class, sex, gender, and nation” (Puar, 2012, p. 49). As we walked Memphis’ historic neighborhoods, we experienced varying states of wonder as intersecting identities shifted with each step in and out of centers and margins or what Min-Ha (1991) terms as “horizontal vertigos” (p. 15). In this paper, we share two of our “horizontal vertigos” that shaped our experiences walking Memphis neighborhoods and that informed our understandings of the frictional movements in the assemblage and the event-ness of identities.
holds a B.S.E.E. (1986) and M.S.E.E. (1988) degree from the University of Arkansas, and a D.Sc. degree in Electro-physics from the George Washington University (2001). Dr. Jacobs is a licensed professional engineer in the state of Tennessee. Dr. Jacobs began teaching in 2006 after a 17 year career as a US Department of Defense researcher. He currently serves as the Undergraduate Coordinator for the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the University of Memphis. He is actively involved in curriculum development and in efforts to form the professional identity of students. He serves as the faculty sponsor for IEEE-HKN honor society and a faculty advisor for IEEE. He provides numerous research experiences for undergraduates, primarily in the fields of optics and imaging which are his major areas of research. Dr. Jacobs is fellow of SPIE and a senior member of IEEE.
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