Purpose
AAAS at MSU is a Black Studies Department that embraces, without apology, Black Feminisms, Black Gender Studies, and Black Sexuality Studies. Our mission is to provide an integrative education that engages conditions of Blackness locally and transnationally. We have three organizing inquiries that motivate and sustain our work: 1) Black Cultures and Institutions, 2) Black Girlhood Studies, and 3) Black Speculative Ecologies. We specialize in community and cultural works, cultivating radical imagination, and collective revolutionary knowledge production. As a unit we are committed to making concrete connections between our scholarship, pedagogy, and social justice.
Aspiration
We insist that Black Studies uncovers and creates “technologies of living” for Black people and Black futures. And when we say Black people, we mean all Black people. And when we say Black futures, that is to say beyond survival into wellness.
Values and Practices
The following is a list of stated values and practices that guide and inform our departmental communication, structure, and conduct with each other and students as well as our decision-making moving forward. These values and practices are aspirational and practice makes better. By documenting our values and practices, calling attention to them regularly in our departmental meetings, and reviewing/editing them annually, we aim to remain mindful of how we want to be in relationship. When we do not keep these agreements, we support each other by encouraging skill building to increase our capacity to be responsive beyond default conditioning, extending grace, and beginning again.
We bring to our study, an intersectional analysis of power to change how ascribed categories of identity, differences, and privileges and the multiple ways systems of oppression unevenly marginalize many and impact us all.
- If I do not like something, I will share a solution.
- We welcome coalitions when we need to go beyond our sphere of influence in service of the department’s vision.
- I trust myself, my colleagues, and my people. My relationships will be respectful no matter rank, position, or title.
- We cheer on AAAS faculty during talks/presentation as part of Squad Care.
- I want us all to win.
- I am well intentioned and assume my colleagues’ intentions are good.
- I will help others who I see are working hard.
- If I sense a path forward, I do not assume others see it, so I find a way to express it to my colleagues.
- I share my dreams out loud with full authority that they can shape now and the future.
- In creating anew, I know healing is required and it’s timing is up to me and my guides.
- Be in communication with ancestors and that which came before us including the herstories of progress and movement(s) that have led us here.
- We work with multiple conceptions of time; working across time and space (those who are here, gone, and who will be).
- I hold others’ dreams with care, compassion, and wonder.
- I have a full life outside of work and my life has meaning well beyond my labor and productivity.
- I will rest before I think I need it and before it is required.
- I trust that you care about me and understand my interests well enough that you will represent my interests even if I am not present. (Excerpt from Four Levels of Trust (1995) by Louise Diamond)
- I will create my/our “rest nest” – tools, mementos, etc. on the Second Floor and elsewhere.
- If I am upset or experience suffering, I will give compassion first to myself and address it with the appropriate person as early as I can.
- I will affirm myself, the squad, our students, and our community.
- I will thoughtfully communicate my needs and desires, invite squad to do so as well, and go about/ask for help in pursuing them.
- I make time to tend to my health and use my benefits.
- I understand that we are all at varying levels of health and wellness. As I work toward my own wellness, I acknowledge others’ wellness journeys and support the wellness of the group.
- I hold myself accountable and remain open to the kindness of my colleagues.
- I accept the chaos of new beginnings and stop demanding impossibility from me and my colleagues (Excerpted from Holding Change (2021) by adrienne maree brown).
- Alignment does not always mean agreement. Alignment means you’ve made peace with trusting the process and the other cultural workers who you’re building with.
- What’s learned here leaves here. What’s said here stays here.
- It is okay to pivot when there is a more productive way forward.
- Mistakes are required. I will be gentle with myself and my colleagues when mistakes occur and seek the lesson.
- I commit to discussing an agenda item no more than twice before I place my vote.
- I accept that we are forever building.
- As an institutional builder, I do not overstep boundaries nor use my ideas and power to control or dominate.
- In my speech, I use “I” statements to ground in my truth and share more of who I am with my colleagues (including my needs and boundaries).
- I treat people as humans, not as dispensable bodies and recognize their humanity is word and action.
- I willingly show up with my expertise and share my knowledge, gifts, skills, and talents.
- I help to prepare/steward the space before and after AAAS events.
- How we show up looks different for everyone and may change and fluctuate contingent upon the season. I will give grace to myself and others trusting that everyone is always doing their best.
- I hold space for joy, rather than rally around trauma and drama.
- I will intentionally move slower keeping in mind wellness and health is necessary for sustainability.
- I am proactive about seeking support for what I need and also attending to the impact of my actions (Holding Change by adrienne maree brown, pg. 164)
- I will say no to maintain a healthy balance of work and wellness.
- I release any shame or guilt associated with needing to pull back or adjust my commitments.
- Take a step back.
- I know that I am a work in-progress.
- I give myself and others grace.
- I am careful to listen to myself and my needs.
- I am careful to be soft and gentle with myself and I strive to do that with others.
- I can acknowledge the rough points of myself and others.
- I give myself permission to have fun on the job.
- I welcome experimental approaches.
- Laughter is good and is also a sign of productivity. I don’t take myself too seriously.
- I recognize that play is not perfection and I relish in play imperfection.
- I will practice re-membering play practices, explicit or marooned, from my lineages and communities.
- I will play with movement: stretching, dancing in the mirror, dancing in the halls, with each other, outside the office; take a walk, reconnect with the body as accessibility allows
- I step into spaces understanding that everyone I interact with has lived a rich life with histories and experiences that shape how they navigate the world from their own unique perspective. I work to honor and respect that as knowledge.
- I honor my own lived experience as knowledge.
- We will create, make, and ideate (more) together.
- We will create together informed by our other values (e.g., create around “play”).
- When I am not feeling my best, I will tap into my creative abilities. I will return to my art.
- I will work to unlearn and learn more about my fears
- I will that trust that my honesty will be honored and affirmed (by me, others, the universe)
- I will be aware of passive aggressive behavior and embrace being more, loving, open and direct with my communication
- I will grapple with and embrace conflict, agreeing to move towards a practice of care, commitment, honesty, knowledge, responsibility, respect as taught to us by bell hooks
- Understand the relationship between vulnerability and trust; work toward feeling safe with being vulnerable