Speakers: Lora Taub-Pervizpour, Dr. Richard Niesenbaum, Dr. Tineke D’Haeseleer

Some of the most brilliant minds and voices connected with Domain of One’s Own hold Virginia Woolf central to our understanding of the project’s origins and aspirations. “As you all know, I’m sure,” Martha Burtis reminded the Domains 2017 crowd, “the title Domain of One’s own comes from a long essay published by Virginia Woolf in 1929.” The title of Martha’s 2017 keynote, “Neither locked in nor locked out,” also drew from that essay. A call to action of sorts, Audrey Watters’ essay, “The Web We Need to Give Students,” claims that Domains “enables students to build the contemporary version of what Virginia Woolf in 1929 famously demanded…the necessity of a personal place to write.” In “Whose Afraid of Domain of One’s Own,” Debra Schleef suggests that the connections between Woolf’s essay and Domains have not been substantively explored and sets out to begin that work by asking several critical questions, including: Should DoOO have an explicitly feminist voice? What other inequalities might DoOO address in terms of cultural capital, social justice, access? How is the connection between Woolf and DoOO central to the liberal arts enterprise?

In leading efforts to envision Domains at Muhlenberg College, we stand on the shoulders of these brilliant thinkers, trying in our own way to help colleagues and students grab hold the opportunities of a place on the web to think, write, and make. In this effort, it is helpful to keep in mind not only Woolf’s vision but also the words of an earlier writer, Emily Dickinson: “Imagination lights the slow fuse of possibility.” In this panel presentation, Dickinson’s framing will be helpful in describing the process of introducing and growing Domain of One’s Own at Muhlenberg. Some of the questions we address include: How do we engage faculty to imagine the possibilities of Domains within their teaching and scholarship? How do we keep alight the slow fuse of possibility amidst constraints of time and resources? What forms of collaboration with students build our understanding of DoOO practices that best enable learners to break with their taken-for-granted ways of working with the web? That is, to eschew the complacency that accommodates surveillance capitalism in favor of what the philosopher queen Maxine Greene describes as “a conscious endeavor to impose different orders upon experience,” (Greene, 2001. Variations on a Blue Guitar, p. 5)?

Now in its third full year, BergBuilds has grown from a dozen or so Domains in a pilot to over 750 student, staff, and faculty projects. The faculty participants on this panel will share some of the ways that they are encountering Domains in their scholarship and teaching, and opening to new kinds of possibilities in their roles as teachers and learners within the liberal arts. Rich Niesenbaum, professor of biology and director of the sustainability studies program, will share how his work with Domains focuses on enhancing integrative learning and global perspectives in sustainability studies. Tineke D’Haeseleer, assistant professor of history and Asian studies, will share how she is introducing Domains as space for students to reflect, to integrate, and to curate a digital scholarly presence. Both faculty will speak to the ways that they are linking Domains to pedagogical formations that actively imagine and invent new possibilities for themselves and the students they teach.