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S2E9 – Interview with Ann Gagné
Our number one fan returns to World of Stories! Special guest Ann Gagné joins Margrit and Eileen to talk about precarious work in academia, accessibility in education and beyond, touch and tactility in a pandemic, and so much more! Be sure to check out Ann’s new books, The Canadian Precariat and Embodying the Tactile in Victorian Literature.
Recommendations of the Episode: Academic Ableism by Jay Timothy Dolmage, On Being Included by Sara Ahmed, and Feel Ways: A Scarborough Anthology.
Join the conversation on Twitter at twitter.com/World_ofStories or email us at worldofstoriespodcast@gmail.com.
Transcript
Eileen 0:16
Welcome to World of Stories, a podcast about how stories shapes our lives. I’m Eileen and my pronoun is she.
Margrit 0:23
I’m Margrit and my pronoun is they.
Eileen 0:37
Hi Margrit.
Margrit 0:39
Hi Eileen. How’s it going?
Eileen 0:41
It’s going. Actually, I’m really excited today because we have a guest. We’re welcoming back Ann Gagne to our podcast and her pronouns are she and her. She is a lesbian Franco-Italian settler, originally from Northwestern Quebec and lands covered by the James Bay Northern Quebec Agreement. She has lived in Toronto on Treaty 13 territory since the early 1990s. She works as an educational developer with a focus on universal design for learning at the University of Toronto Mississauga and is a sessional instructor at George Brown College. She is passionate about inclusive and ethical pedagogical strategies and works with instructors to ensure curricular accessibility. Her research focuses on the role of the tactile in education and literature, which is super cool. And we’re going to talk more about that. Welcome back Ann!
Ann 1:40
Thanks. I’m super happy to be here.
Margrit 1:44
Welcome back. I’m so excited. I’m going to echo Eileen’s sentiment and I’m super excited for this opportunity to chat with you. So let’s just dive right in. Because, you know, no suspense here. Our first question is, how has your professional life changed in the pandemic?
Ann 2:01
So, like most folks have been working from home since the pandemic started. So I started working from home March 13, 2020. And so being an educational developer means that a lot of the questions that I would get from instructors for the pivot to, you know, remote teaching and learning would come to me, so things like assignment design, or course design or using instructional tools and the pedagogy behind it. And you know, how to make their courses more engaging, and all of those kinds of things came to me. And I was the only educational developer at my campus at that time. So it was, it was a lot. And so at the beginning, I was working something like seven days a week for the first few months just to try to keep up and make sure that everyone felt supported. Um, it was really rewarding work. And still is, of course, but it was a lot out of it, below a lot of it. And I was facilitating workshops on specific topics to support instructors, and we even like co-created like a four-day, summer camp for instructors in the summer. So it’s just, it’s been a really busy time.
Margrit 3:21
Yeah, it’s like triage. What do you need? Yeah, go there. You go to summer camp?
Ann 3:27
Yeah.
Eileen 3:30
So you’ve been super busy, aside from helping other instructors develop new teaching methodologies, but you’ve also been publishing a couple of your own books. So the first one, actually, I don’t know what order you publish them in. But the first one I’m going to talk about anyway, is The Canadian Precariat. And it’s about how non-tenured professionals in academia have difficulty finding consistent full-time employment. And then so there’s a pressure to be continuously productive to stay employed, which I think dovetails very nicely with some of the topics we’ve talked about previously in the podcast. Can you talk a bit about how the ideas in your book, were informed by your personal experiences in academia?
Ann 4:23
Yeah, so yeah, that is the order. So The Canadian Precariat is an edited collection and came out in October, late October of this year. And so it’s a great question because it really ties into what we were just talking about in terms of my professional life, too, is when I was new, when the epidemic started, I was on a contract. And that contract was set to expire on November 2020. So while I was supporting instructors with all this stuff, you know, I was thinking my own long term goals and my own next steps. And so luckily, last summer, there was a full time position that was posted. It was a position that focused on Universal Design for Learning, which I have a lot of experience in. So I applied and luckily, I was a successful candidate. So now, you know, I am, you know, full time employed. But the experience like really echoes what happens in academia, right that you could be like the busy point person, for this really important thing that’s happening, and yet still be in a precarious contract role. And the people that you’re interacting with, don’t know that, unless you choose to tell them that right.
And so what I wanted to explore with the essays in this book, which actually, the nugget of this started during the college strike, as I was picketing, and walking around the college, I was like, we need to have a book, need to have an essay collection that talks about this experience. And so that’s where that came from. But, you know, what I also wanted to explore was the precarity of the instructors, but also the trickle down effect of the precarity to the students, but also to the other people in that sort of academic system. So in this edited collection, there’s essays from students as well, that kind of speak to their reactions to this precarity, once they find out that maybe the person that’s teaching them is a sessional, and so on.
And so all of that is, is really to bring up that if we have conversations about precarity, as this edited collection attempts to do, is that we really need to keep everything in context, right? And so we can’t necessarily talk about this, like, you know, need for productivity in academe without talking about it in terms of like asking a person, what’s your employment status? Right, like, are you full time? Are you sessional? And then what other things, what other positionality do you do embody that can, you know, speak to that? Right? So like, if I’m, you know, a precariously employed single woman with two kids and a non-visible disability, and I’m living in a COVID hot zone, don’t ask me how many articles I published this year, right? Like, ask me, ask me, like, you know, what supports can help make your life easier. And so I think we really get to some of that in this edited collection, or at least I hope so anyway.
Margrit 7:17
Yeah, it’s really interesting how that intersects and how sort of that systemic nature of our intersections has been exploded in this pandemic, right. And how it dovetails with what you were saying, I really love that you, you thought, and you think, because I’m, I’m the same on the same schedule that October was this year, because my year also starts in September and ends in August. Then October is definitely this year. And for listeners who are not in academia, we are always running by the academic year. So you’re starting September and end in August. Um, but yeah, I want to go back to what Eileen was saying about how busy you’ve been. And thank you for putting that in context for us for what productivity means in academia, because The Canadian Precariat is the first book that came out for you this year. Um, so what I’m really interested in is, you know, how do you balance work and rest? Like, what is rest for you?
Ann 8:23
And you’re laughing because you know, the answer, because, you know, this is like, how do you balance it, Ann? And the answer is poorly, lol. Um, so no, honestly, at the beginning, as I was saying, was really difficult because I was working like seven days a week. And but again, you know, the fact that these two books came out, like three or four months between each other was less about the productivity in the pandemic, and more about, as we were talking about, before we started recording, you know, how academic publishing or all publishing kind of takes forever, because both of these projects were actually done around December 2019. And they only came out like, you know, a year later, so. But also these books wouldn’t have been able to happen unless I had full time employment. And they happen to dovetail with that as well. Right.
So in terms of balance, I really try to take Saturday’s off. Like that’s my day to reflect and I do some reading, you know, maybe some reading for pleasure, whatever that is. But I also you know, I say this and acknowledge that I have the space and time to do this. Because right now, I don’t have any direct care responsibilities in my life that take up that space. But I really feel that that Saturday is important because I need that reflection time. I can’t be a productive person, if I don’t reflect. And if I don’t have that time to reflect that I’m finding as a pandemic goes on, that my ability to be mindful is actually diminishing because I just I need more time to reflect and I don’t actually have that so yeah, so if I didn’t have my Saturdays to kind of think, I don’t know, I don’t know where I would be honestly.
Eileen 10:06
I just wanted to circle back around to something you were talking about. Around the precariousness of employment and how that is, like, I’m not sure how to frame this question. And I guess it’s more of a thought than a question. But the stress of being in contract roles, like going from one contract to the next to the next to the next. And I think Ann and Margrit, you both have experienced this, where you’re getting to the end of your contract, and you don’t know if it’s going to be renewed and you don’t know where your next contract is going to be coming from. And the amount of stress that that can add to your life is, I think, something that people who haven’t been in that situation can’t fully appreciate, you know? And I think it’s like one thing if–No, I mean, I just I don’t think it matters, what else is going on in your life, you know, everyone’s got responsibilities, everyone’s got bills to pay, and if you don’t know where your next paycheck is coming from. That’s tremendously stressful.
Ann 11:22
Yeah, no, for sure. Because I worked, I worked in, you know, before, where I am now, or, you know, throughout and Margrit can, you know, speak to this as well, I was working in precarious roles for more than a decade, right, going from contract to contract semester to semester, trying to figure out what courses that I was teaching, or what instructional design contracts I was going to pick up, you know, that kind of stuff. So yeah, it is, it’s, it’s, you’re always thinking one step ahead. And you have to be because you need, you know, to think about, you know, where your food and your roof is going to come from, you know,
Margrit 11:54
Yeah, and you always feel like you’re not measuring up, because, you know, there’s not enough that you can do to ensure that you’re going to get that contract, let alone a full time job. Because there’s other you know, like, I personally know, you know, scores of other people who are just as qualified. And just as, you know, meritorious of getting contracts and full time jobs and things like that. So it’s, it’s a, it’s an economy of pitting people against one another, when, in fact, you know, we all have a common problem, the system, right, so.
Eileen 12:31
And I think that’s going back to how broken a capitalist system is, because that is a product of capitalism, and caring more about profits and the bottom line, then about the people that you’re working with, right, it’s cheaper to have a contract employee, as opposed to a full time employee. And so employers are going to default to that or like, prefer that over bringing on someone full-time, paying them a salary, paying for benefits, and all of that other stuff. So…
Ann 13:12
That benefit piece is so important now, right? Like we’re seeing more and more people talk about that, like, what benefits do you have? And how, you know, how can you use those benefits? Right. And so, you know, we’re in a healthcare crisis right now, benefits are so important.
Margrit 13:28
And I think it also, what the healthcare crisis is showing us is that this very simple capitalist calculation is not true. So there was a an intensivist doctor from a hospital here in East Toronto, who was doing, on Twitter, who was doing the calculation of like, this is how much it cost for one patient in crisis in the intensive care versus this is how much it costs to give people sick days. So that bottom line calculation that you were talking about, Eileen is not always sort of, it’s not always correct, because you really have to look at all the aspects and honestly, business school does not prepare people to think about all the aspects, you have to have a social sciences, a humanist view of things to understand that if you shut down the entire country for a month, like or whatever, like Australia did, then you’re going to be able to reopen. And instead of doing piecemeal things, and always catching up like we’ve been doing in Canada and being 13 months in, or is it 14 months in to the pandemic and still being shut down. And having like, I’m thinking, for example of people I know, like my stylist, all of the restaurants that I used to go to for brunch, like people who rely, and having been closed since, what, like six months, eight months. So you have to be able to do those calculations. They’re not just math, right? They’re, they’re sort of higher, I don’t know like bigger perspective calculations.
Eileen 15:01
And that’s the difference between the micro and the macro, right? It’s the idea that, well, in economic terms, what you’re talking about is an externality. It’s an unseen cost of, of protecting your bottom line. And the thing is that, that’s why, I should say it’s the difference between economics and business. Whereas business cares about my bottom line, what affects me, and what the consequences are for other people, that’s not my problem. Whereas, like, if you want to talk about it from an economic point of view, like you said, you have to look at everything in totality, you have to look at society as a whole. And you can’t say that what benefits one person is going to be good for everyone, you have to understand that, like, every action has a consequence, and you need to balance all of those things together.
Ann 16:05
You know, that’s such a great point. I was like, I actually blogged about this on Sunday, in fact, about how all of these reactions that folk tend to do in the pandemic, are very spurned on by their own, like positionality, like their own identity in terms of like, how is it going to benefit me, just me this singular person? And not like society as a whole? And golly, gee, I wish. I wish the world was not like that. But it is.
Eileen 16:37
Yeah, I think we all do. I think so many times on this podcast, we just come back to this idea of how bad capitalism is and down with capitalism. If only it was so easy to dismantle. So Ann, one of the things you’re very outspoken about is accessibility and access and education. So how do you think the pandemic has highlighted these issues? And is there anything that has changed in the area of accessibility as a result of the pandemic?
Ann 17:15
So yeah, um, so very outspoken is a really nice way to phrase it. So thanks. Yeah. I know that when most people see my name now, there’s probably a lot of rolling of eyes and other things. But honestly, I truly believe that the pandemic has really highlighted access in many different ways, which I think is really, really great. But it’s also super sad that it took the pandemic for that to happen. So I think that we’re really talking about and thinking about access and education in different ways, which is great, but there’s just like, so much more work that needs to happen.
And I think a lot of the work that needs to happen is around awareness. Like that awareness piece is really key. And I’ve, I’ve been trying to really work on that awareness piece in the work that I do. So I think it’s really great that some folks are like captioning their meetings and captioning their classes. And I’m super excited about all the accessibility options in this, in this season of World of Stories, so yay. Um, but I feel like everyone should be, right, like, everyone should be captioning, everyone should be giving transcripts. And it’s, you know, it’s well known that like automatic captions aren’t great, right? Like, a lot of people in the Deaf community call them craptions, and they call them craptions for a reason, because, you know, they’re not really good. So we need to get better at that.
But then there’s other access pieces that I find were being discussed a lot more, and were more front and center at the beginning of the pandemic. And now I think people are not talking about it as less. And as much, which is technological access, you know, this assumption that everyone is going to have some sort of device, right? And that’s simply not the case that like, you know, in some instances, depending on who your person is, like the learners that you may, or the people that are participating, they may be participating on a cell phone, like in a parking lot of a fast food restaurant, because they want to get the free Wi Fi right. And as the pandemic goes on, it’s not like this is gonna get any easier. It’s not like learners are going to magically like acquire a computer, chances are the opposite is going to be the case.
So I think this is something that we really need to think about in terms of our design, like not only just in education, but how we’re designing courses, but like for events. And so one of the things that I’m really, really focusing on now, if you follow me on Twitter is access in academic conferences. Because I think there’s a lot of gatekeeping that’s going on there. These conferences they charge like hundreds of dollars in fees, which is like a financial burden for graduate students and precarious instructors. Right, sessional workers cannot go to these conferences because they can’t afford the fees. But then they don’t actually have like basic like access things like captions or transcripts. And they create like schedules without gaps. So people can’t take breaks and just, you know, I want us, us, like royal us to get to a place in education where we’re really modeling contextually good practices. And I’m not seeing it yet. And so I think until I see it, I’ll probably be that person that is very outspoken about it.
Eileen 20:36
One thing I find really interesting is the explosion of TikTok and how TikTok has really pushed forward the idea of closed captioning for on social media, which is totally unexpected, you would never think that, you know, a platform like TikTok would be so instrumental in that, but because TikTok is all video and a lot of people might watch videos on mute, or, you know, Deaf people are using TikTok,aving captions on your TikTok videos has become so so important. It’s the point where if you don’t, then a lot of people will just scroll right past the video, and you won’t get the engagement that you want. If you want to become a TikTok influencer, which, obviously we all want to do.
Ann 21:35
But that’s a great point.
Eileen 21:37
Yeah. And it’s flow, it’s overflowed into Instagram now as well, where, because Instagram is trying very hard to copy TikTok, where Instagram now is also trying very hard to make closed captioning software or tools accessible, and they’re not quite there yet. It’s still pretty convoluted to get the captioning on there. But people are recognizing the importance of having captions for all of their videos.
Ann 22:08
Yeah, and I think that piece that you’re mentioning Eileen about it being applicable to so many people? Because you know, oh, well, captions are just for, you know, Deaf or hard of hearing users. And how many Deaf and hard of hearing users are there? It’s like, no, like, if I have a toddler who’s sleeping, and I need to watch my course, then I need captions, right? Like, if I’m sharing a computer or a room with three other people while they’re watching Netflix, and I need to partake in whatever I’m partaking in, I need caption. So that’s sort of narrow minded, like, well, this is just a disability thing, you know, is what, you know, I think I would really love for people to start thinking about access more comprehensive, right? Like, what what is comprehensive access? Right?
Eileen 22:55
And the thing is that, like, I am not Deaf or hard of hearing, but I always watch with closed captions on. I always do.
Ann 23:03
Same.
Eileen 23:03
Because when it’s not on, I, it’s so easy for me to get lost in what it’s saying. And I mean, I have no idea why, but when it I’ve just gotten used to having it there that I can glance at the closed caption if I need to just, you know, figure out what’s being said, and it just helps. And I think the really interesting thing is when the issue of captions became more and more prominent here in the West, I realized that in Asia, there’s captioning on everything. Like all of the media in Asia has captioning regardless. And I don’t know why or how or like, what the story is behind that. But for as long as I can remember, anytime I’m watching an Asian show or movie, there’s automatically captioning. I mean, in the whatever Asian language it is, so it might not help people who can’t read it. But it’s like, I don’t know, how did they get it so much faster and earlier than, like people here? I don’t know.
Margrit 24:14
Yeah. And if we can normalize it, I mean, captioning is how I learned English is, you know, like in Romanian media, they don’t dub the media, they caption it with translations. And so having the opportunity to hear like the native language, the words in use, and the idiom. English is so idiomatic. That is, it’s very, very hard to learn, like without being immersed in the culture, because nothing makes sense. Like why does get on and get off have such a completely different meaning? Like, why what is the logic? How do I learn that as an English language speaker, right? And so I teach a lot of people who’s who, whose first language is not English, and these are the hardest things to get.
But when you do have that, and I think, like Ann was saying, we need to shift the conversation from accessibility and sort of accommodation to access. Because putting in place these measures actually provides access to a much wider range of people than just then people with disabilities and people who are hard of hearing.
Your conversation about TikTok makes me think of, have you heard of Clubhouse? Yeah, the new social medium that is based on. I’ve never, I haven’t been there, not interested. But as somebody who is slowly, very slowly losing their hearing, I’m very not interested in Clubhouse. I don’t want to know what’s what’s, what it’s about and what not, but it just it. That’s the first thing that it made me think about when, in a moment when we’re all sort of not all, but like most of us are moving toward media that has sort of a variety of representations, UDL language and you know, how much is Clubhouse was going to, to sort of catch on, which may be a conversation that we want to park for later.
Because I’m really, really interested Ann, in getting to your second book, Embodying the Tactile in Victorian literature: Touching Bodies/Bodies Touching. I love that title. I think it’s amazing. And the book talks about embodiment and touch and I read these as a form of or, or even maybe a metaphor, maybe I’m overreaching here, for human relationships. And it kind of led me to the question of how did your relationships change? And what does friendship or family life or any of that look like for you in the pandemic? And in relation to the book? And I’m done with my question. Now, I will shut up.
Ann 26:46
Can ugh be the answer to my question for that? I, um, so so the book is a monograph of my dissertation. Right? So the things that I talked about in my dissertation, and it’s focused on how relationships are expressed or described through tactile interactions and different types of tactile interactions. And so, of course, this is very much top of mind right now in a time when we’re supposed to be distant and we have to be distant.
But I discovered, I don’t know if I necessarily knew this, but I discovered this about me that I think I get a lot of my interactions through my interactions with coworkers. Because I wasn’t coming home to anyone. And so when Eileen was talking a few episodes back about how we don’t talk about single folk getting older. And like, my goodness, did that resonate for me, I was just like, Yes, I was like listening to this and like waving my hands. Because, like, you know, what, what do people, what do people who don’t come home to any, anything or anyone do, right? Like, so, for the whole of the pandemic, the only like, living thing that I had in my life was my cat. And he died in March. So it’s, it’s been tough. So, too, this is me getting like, Oh, my cat.
So I like for family things. I talked to my mom on FaceTime, like every weekend, which is a lot more than I used to talk to my mom with her about, like, I did not talk to my mother this much before, let’s just say. And so now we’re FaceTiming, like every weekend, but my friend life is honestly like ugh. Like, I text my best friend every day. And we have these great text conversations. And Margrit, I know we text as well. But I haven’t seen my best friend since November, and we live in Toronto. It’s not like we live in different places. And so November’s also the last time I left my house, like literally, and so this pandemic has been, like super lonely for me.
And I understand that, you know, this isn’t a knock to social distancing. I understand that social distancing is a thing. And we need for it to happen. But I’m not even having like zooms or phone calls or anything like that, because so funny, like Ann goes on podcast and calls out all her acquaintances. But um, like, I am aware how everyone has like care work, and they have their own things and their own responsibilities, which means that they don’t have and, Margrit, you spoke to this on the podcast, too, right? Like, you know, the capacity that folk have for other things, right? And knowing when your capacity is at its limit, and you can’t give more than what you have in the tank, right?
And so honestly, this is how and why I spend so much time on Twitter, because Twitter has become my community space. Like it was before but like in the pandemic so much so now is that I don’t really have anybody to talk to on the regular except for like the 2000 people who follow me that I may or may not know. So honestly, like, that’s, that’s how my, that’s how my interactions have have really changed over the pandemic. And yeah, so that’s, that’s kind of, ugh, that’s kind of where I’m at.
Eileen 30:15
I feel you so much, Ann. That’s exactly how I feel with like, this whole thing, just this whole thing, ugh.
Ann 30:25
Ugh, right.
Eileen 30:29
And so one of the things I’ve been hearing from a lot of people lately in the pandemic is that they haven’t been hugged in more than a year. And it was so strange for me to hear people talking about that, because I didn’t think that I don’t think people realized how much they needed touch, like that physical touch, until they couldn’t have it anymore. And I have so many random thoughts about this, because one of the five love languages, if people are familiar with the love languages, is physical touch, right? And so it’s like, well, you would think that people realize that touch is important.
But then, like, in our society, in Western society, there’s so much importance placed on personal space and like not randomly touching strangers. Or if you do, you got to be careful about where you touch and like, you know, staying a particular distance away from me, if people get too close, I feel antsy, you know. And so I was wondering about that, like, juxtaposition between the need for touch, as humans, as animals, as creatures, and how we need that touch versus the societal, I don’t know, like assumption or norm that you maintain a particular distance from people, because they’re strangers, you know? And yeah, like, yeah, the question is not really there, but just that, like, how do you, how do we reconcile that?
Ann 32:17
Yeah, I mean, so I wrote this, this article in the summer with my friend, Duke, who lives in Perth, lives in Australia, who’s also a tactile scholar, and we’re just like, kind of, like, you know, some of the upsides of the pandemic is that we’re really excited that people were actually talking about tactility, like, Yay, like, tactility is a thing now that people are thinking about, people are thinking about being hugged, and, and, you know, those kinds of things. And, you know, I just finished reading this book this weekend, Minding Bodies, and in it, they talk about, like, exactly the things that you’re talking about Eileen, which is like, you know, like the circles that where people feel comfortable, like how, how distanced or how close, like, if it’s a close relationship, or if it’s a stranger, you know.
And so, I’m glad that touch, or at least, like tactility, in some way is on the radar, but I don’t know, if people are going to continue thinking about it. You know, once people get vaccinated, and whatever the future looks like, and I don’t know what the future like, the future of touch is going to look like. And I certainly hope that we still think about it.
But one thing that I really super hope is that we start talking and thinking about the sensory, especially in education, but in our lives, and how the sensory, like, you know, not to get all phenomenological, but how the sensory really informs who we are, right, like, how the sensory can support learning, you know. And, like in education, in particular now, and I mean, in most places too, we’ve now moved to this sort of like visual epistemology where like, everything that we learn is going to be done visually, through a zoom screen, or, you know, a Skype screen or, you know, a Blackboard Collaborate screen. And none of that is taking into account like the embodiment of a person, right? Like, you’re just, you become a set of eyes, right? Like, you become a set of eyes that is getting all of that information, and it forgets the rest of it, right? Like it forgets the fact that you need a hug and forgets the fact that, golly, it would be nice to see your friends not in a screen right? Like it, it forgets all of that.
And so I, you know, we really need to start thinking about how that sensory piece really informed so much of what we do and it’s not just I know that they talk about this in Montessori, you know, schools, but like, the senses are part of who we are as humans in the world and we need to, we need to talk about it more. We need to have a better way of dealing with it. I think.
Eileen 34:55
When you think about certain areas or certain areas of study where they do incorporate, like the physical into the learning, right? Like, I’m just thinking about in university, my kinesiology classmates would have these like, labs where they pair up and then they’re drawing muscle parts on each other. And to learn all the different muscles of the body and to learn all the different parts of the body, and they’re using each other as models. And, you know, we talked to Lee a couple of episodes ago, and Lee is a midwife, and they practiced midwifery skills on each other in class. And now Lee is doing a practicum where they are in, in, you know, in the hospitals and learning on the job and learning while doing and interacting with the folks that they will be providing care to in the future. And it makes so much sense, right? There’s all this like interactional learning that has been incorporated into a lot of courses in a lot of various disciplines.
But why is it only limited to those disciplines that are healthcare related, or whatever, you know, but like, we could teach literature through some physical component, couldn’t we? I mean, it feels like there’s got to be some way to do that, we can teach all sorts of different things with the physical component where you’re getting up out of your seat where you’re not just in front of a computer screen, but you’re interacting with people face to face. And like you said, it’s, it’s the embodiment, and you can learn through the moving of your body, through the interaction with other people. And I honestly think that that kind of interaction can imprint knowledge in a different way that might be way more profound than just sitting and listening to somebody lecture at you.
Margrit 37:14
Yeah, that is the original way that we learned, you know, like, if you’ve been around little people, you have seen that they learned by touching by, you know, depending on the age, they put stuff in their mouth, because their tactility is not yet developed enough. But their, you know, their mouth has enough sensors, and that’s how they’re used to getting information. And so when you were talking about this, it made me think about how much growing up or being an adult is basically about disavowing our human needs, from you know, overriding the fact that we’re exhausted, and we’re depressed, and we’re anxious about all the things to, you know, to not touching.
And this is such an Anglo-Saxon thing about the personal space. And at least, it’s just a very cultural thing. And we need to acknowledge that, that other cultures don’t, like, don’t feel the need to be like, you know, stay the length of three ducks away from me, or whatever. Again, I’m not trying to make light of the need to social distance, I endorse that in the pandemic and everything. I’m just talking about, you know, normally, I think it’s, it’s a lot of because we learned by touching as, as children, as babies, I think we express affection, we express a ton of things by that and other, some cultures are more expressive in that way. And when it comes to the Anglo-Saxon culture, it’s just been repressed. It’s not, you know, it’s not sort of a natural–it’s not that, you know, English people are more naturally, not touchy or whatever. I don’t know. I’m just, I’m just speculating here.
But the other thing that what you were saying kind of led me to think about is, I’m going to do the obnoxious academic thing here and cite Michel Foucault, the Birth of the Clinic, which is a book from the 60s in which he actually talks about how the medical science has evolved, it as sort of this the clinical gaze,aas evolved. And the primacy of vision, and seeing over every other sense and how education has just completely embraced that and has been for a long time. Like think about all like, everything that we do in education or we have been doing is just through sight, very, very few things we call those practicum or they happen in a lab are done for other types of sensory experiences. But primarily, it’s all about vision. And unfortunately, the pandemic like Ann, you were pointing out has completely made that 99% of the experience.
Ann 39:55
Yeah, and even when they do like these add ons, you know, Margrit, as you were talking I was just thinking about, like, when they do these add ons on things like Zoom or MS Teams, and you know how you can now have the background where it kind of mimics like the traditional lecture hall, you know, like, you know, because that’s what we want, right? Like, let’s go back to that tactile experience of like, being in rows and seats instead of like, you know, the Brady Bunch grids that we’re used to seeing, right? I’m old, I’m sorry. And so, you know, but why, why that need? Like, why that feeling that like, Well, you know, what people really want, they want to mimic the like visual, you know, setup of their lecture hall. They’re, like, 120s, 300 person lecture hall when they’re teaching. I’m like, no, that’s not what we want, at all. But okay. So I don’t know, it’s, it’s very, you’re right, like this, this, everything has to be the way that it was. But, you know, virtually.
Margrit 40:55
So all of this sounds a lot like doom and gloom. And it is, it’s, we’re in a dire situation right now. But we do want to think about, also the good stuff. So one of the things that you mentioned, Ann, is with your colleague who is also a scholar of tactility, were talking about how, one, you know, unexpected outcome of the pandemic is that people are talking about tactility. Are there other positive side effects? Can you tell us how you find joy these days?
Ann 41:25
Um, so like, joy is, joy is difficult, joy is definitely difficult. So I preface my answer, because context is important, by acknowledging the fact that I am very privileged that the unit that I rent comes with a deck and an outdoor space, and I know that that is a premium right now with a lot of people. And so most of the joy that I’ve been finding since March, honestly, are the opportunities that I have when it’s warm enough to sit on the deck and watch the birds. I have some bird feeders in the back. And it’s a small thing. And yeah, shout out to my best friend Emma, who got me into birds. But it’s, it’s a small thing, but it’s a really important thing. Because those moments on the deck become the opportunity to recharge like, you know, last weekend there was a male cardinal and a female cardinal, like, there was two female cardinals that were like really like, like rockem sockem robots over this male cardinal and I was just like, oh, man. Matriarchy is real, even in the cardinal world, but, and I was watching this with glee. And it was, like I’m watching them arguing and I’m texting Emma going, is this normal? And she’s like, yes, yes. It’s absolutely normal. Like, okay, because I have never noticed this stuff before. And, you know, I’ve been like an urbanite now. Um, so yeah, like, it’s weird how those small little things give me joy. I have finches. Every time I see the finch at the feeder. I’m like, oh, hi finch, how’s it going? Oh, yeah, so that’s honestly, those are my little, my little joys now are the random birds that end up coming into my backyard.
Margrit 43:02
We should make friends with, your finches should make friends with the squirrels who live in my backyard. Most prominent of whom is Eleanor. I don’t know what her name is Eleanor, it just is.
Eileen 43:17
Ann you can organize a bird watching tour for us once we’re all allowed to see each other in person again.
Ann 43:23
Yeah. For sure. I would love that and Emma too. Emma’s great, yes.
Eileen 43:29
And Emma too. I feel like we could talk for ages and ages. Unfortunately, we don’t have ages and ages to talk. So let’s move on to the recommendation of the episode. Ann, what would you like to recommend for our readers, for our listeners, and readers? I’m assuming they’re readers too.
Ann 43:50
I, my goodness, I have so many recommendations because originally in my head, I was like, there’s so many things that I want people to read. But I think I’m gonna I’m gonna switch up. I don’t want to recommend too many things. I know I’m supposed to recommend only one. But honestly, I have like three things to recommend, is that?
Margrit 44:10
Go ahead.
Eileen 44:11
Go ahead, go for it.
Margrit 44:12
The more the merrier.
Ann 44:13
Okay, so everyone needs to read Academic Ableism by Jay Dolmage. Because even if you’re not an academic, it’ll make you realize how everything is designed in an ableist way and it’s sad. Everybody should read On Being Included by Sara Ahmed, because diversity and inclusion is complicated and it is much more than just having a committee and so therefore you need to, folks should read this book. But this weekend, I read Feel Ways, which is an anthology of Scarborough writing and everyone should read Feel Ways because it is great. I have some former students from UTSC in this. It’s got fiction, nonfiction and poetry and it’s all stories and ideas based in Scarborough. So everyone buy and read Feel Ways.
Margrit 45:15
That sounds amazing. I’m already like googling them, all of them. And yeah. Especially the Scarborough Anthology, because I’m right here. Right, right. In, in next door to Scarborough, I can’t I’m not finding my words, which is probably a sign that we should move towards wrapping up. But before we do that, Ann, would you like to share where people can find you or your work online?
Ann 45:41
So I have a blog called All Things Pedagogical, which I have, I found out the other day when I was looking that I’ve been writing in since like, 2009, because what even. I know. So I usually post a blog post every Sunday, like usually, you know, noon-ish, or afternoon-ish, that talks about something that’s pedagogically related or accessibility related. So that’s one. And then you can find me on Twitter because I basically live there. I have like a little like a little house there, little Ann’s Twitter house. And it’s just my name at Ann Gagne, A, N, N, G, A, G, N, E. And you will find me there with the 2,000 other folk who randomly follow me.
Eileen 46:29
So wonderful. Everyone should definitely go follow Ann on Twitter. And thank you so much for being here and chatting with us, Ann. We’ve had a lovely, lovely time.
Ann 46:39
Thank you for having me. This was great.
Margrit 46:41
Yeah, thanks, Ann. As you can see, we couldn’t stop talking. So we’re stopping now, imminently. As always, you can join the conversation on Twitter at World_OfStories or you can email us directly at WorldOfStoriesPodcast@gmail.com. If you’d like our show, please share the podcast with your friends. You can rate and review World of Stories on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, and all other major podcasting platforms. The more reviews we get, the easier it will be for new listeners to find us.
Eileen 47:12
And lastly, if you’d like to partner with us in producing the podcast we appreciate every contribution no matter how big or small. You can donate at ko-fi.com/WorldOfStories. Thank you so much for listening.
Until next time, stay safe.
Margrit 47:28
And keep on humaning.