Call for Participation in the Neighborhood Project
Over the next
year I will be conducting a public ethnography, exploring the pathways of
connection and disconnection in one urban neighborhood. A special focus of the
study will be the ways the community and its educational institutions
interact.
The neighborhood
is East Pawtucketville in Lowell, Massachusetts, where I have lived since
1999.
In undertaking
this study, I am unabashedly an activist for the neighborhood. I approach this project from a very embedded,
action research perspective.
I invite you to
join me on this journey!
Shaping the Study
The
study will be conducted publicly through a blog and wiki. The
blog will
be the place where I report on events, conversations, musings and reflections
about the neighborhood and my ongoing interactions with organizations and
individuals. This will also be a place
where I can consider theory of value to the methodology and substance of the
study.
The wiki
will be a place to store more extensive resources: neighborhood plans, photos, historical
artifacts, and theoretical resources related to the study.
You can
participate in the study by following the blog and visiting the
wiki. The site will be available
soon. Let me know if you are interested
in taking part!
East Pawtucketville
East Pawtucketville is a small dense urban neighborhood
founded, in large part, by Franco-Americans who moved to Lowell, Massachusetts
for jobs in the textile mills. Today it
is a diverse neighborhood including people from many cultural backgrounds. It lies along the northern bank of the
Merrimack River at the spectacular Pawtucket Falls. UMass Lowell’s North Campus is located here
and two elementary schools—one public and one parochial. Author Jack Kerouac
writes extensively of this neighborhood—his childhood home.
If
you are interested in participating in the Neighborhood Project Public
Ethnography, please provide me with your email so I can let you know when the
official site is up and running and/or watch for more information on my
blog: QRfrag.blogspot.com.
Graduate School of Education
UMASS Lowell
61 Wilder St.
Lowell, MA
01854
http://qrfrag.blogspot.com/
Join me over the next year as I explore the neighborhood, learn
about connections and disconnections within the community, and seek ways to
encourage and nourish this world.
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