Editors’ Introduction: Opening Access

Aerial photo of Euphrates River, 2009. Courtesy of NASA.

This introduction discusses the importance of open access scholarship and its relation to the academy. The introduction provides an overview of the articles in the journal, which include responses to the forum on universal basic income (UBI) published in issue 7.2. Finally, this issue marks the beginning of the Years in Cultural Studies project.

Ethics, Collaboration, and Knowledge Production: Digital Storytelling with Sexually Diverse Farmworkers in California

This article outlines the digital storytelling methods used for a community based research project focused on issues of sexuality among California farmworkers: Sexualidades Campesinas. We note how our process of collaboration in the creation and production of digital stories was shaped by the context and our envisioned storytellers. We then offer a critical analysis of our own unique experience with digital storytelling in this project, focusing on a handful of concepts key to understanding the nature of our collaborative production process: community, affect and collaboration, storytelling, performance, and mediation, with an eye to the problem of ethics.

La Perrouque

Intended for la perruque, Michel de Certeau’s modern-day proletariat, this is a user’s manual that critically examines the intricacies of the academic employment process, from the interview to the chicaneries that one endures during his at-will tenure. And so, this manifesto is not only a creative, autobiographical account of how I have so far tactically revolted or “made do” and am surviving the prodding and churning of the machine, it also is one of many portraits that collectively paint an encouraging picture of human resistance.