About Jonathan Truong
I am a Laidlaw Undergraduate Leadership and Research Scholar at Columbia University studying in English and philosophy. My research interests include, broadly, Anglo-American fiction (C19-present), theory of the novel (late C19-present), narratology, and (the literature of) electronic media. I am particularly interested in the problem of narrative form in the digital age.
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Hi everyone! Sorry for the late posts, I've been working at the Justice Lab on the Emerging Adult Justice Project.
Week One:
As you set out on your research or community engagement project, do you find yourself experiencing any worries or insecurities about saying something that’s already been said? How do we as researchers and/or volunteers learn to address or set aside those insecurities or, better yet, to use them to our advantage?
If your project this summer differs from your project last summer, has last summer’s project influenced your project this year, and if so how? If your project is different, what tools have you developed to help you work on this project?
Starting out in any new project or job is very nerve-racking because its hard to know exactly what your role will be before you begin. It was especially hard this year because I've never worked in the criminal justice space before. Last year I worked in Public Health and this year I became interested in the Justice Lab because mass incarceration is a public health issue. The EAJ Project uses neuroscience and developmental psychology to demonstrate why young adults need to be treated differently in the justice system. Although my last summer and this summer are certainly different, the data analysis skills and especially the writing skills have been super valuable so far. Having a public health background also gave me a unique view of the project which has been helpful too.
Week Two:
If your project connects with your research from last summer, explain the ways in which it picks up on themes, issues, or questions that are important to you. How are you expanding on your project from last summer? How is your understanding of this topic evolving?
If you are doing a leadership-in-action or community engagement project, how do you interact with community members, and what kind of conversations are you having? How do you connect with this community of people, and what common cause do you find?
I have been meeting a lot of people working in the criminal justice space, many of whom are formerly incarcerated themselves. We have had some great conversations which helped me realize how broken the justice system is and gave me insight into the devastating powers that lawyers can have. We also had an event recently that brought together DAs, legal aid defenders, judges, non-profits, and many other stake-holders who all represented different sides and angles of the system. This kind of conversation is pretty rare since these aren't groups that tend to cooperate together but we were able to have great conversations together and everyone was able to find common ground. A common cause of everyone in this space is that they really care about their job and pursuing justice. Unfortunately, everyone goes about it in different ways that can have negative effects on people.
Week Three:
What does a typical day look like this summer? Aside from a narrative description, upload a photo, video and/or other media submission!
I wake up and head to work. When I get there, I check my email and answer emails from Lael Chester, my boss, and anyone else. Then sometimes we have a check-in meeting with the internship supervisor and all the fellows share what they've been working on, so we can discuss and give feedback on each other's work. Depending on the day, I am asked to sit-in on Lael's meetings with different people. One day it was a public defender's office in Wyoming to consult on a case. Another day it's the Nebraska probation and parole department that we're helping implement developmentally appropriate policies for emerging adults. I look up facts they ask about during the meetings and also take notes and consolidate deliverables. When I am not in meetings I work on my other tasks. These include a paper I am writing on gang attraction for emerging adults, the monthly newsletter, updating the website, event planning, editing content, etc. Sometimes we also have field trips to meet different groups like the Center for Justice or the Reentry Theater Harlem. Recently we had an event at the Columbia Club that I helped plan and all the interns got to come and watch really interesting speakers.
Week Four:
What challenges and/or difficulties have you encountered and how did you go about resolving them? Speak to a specific challenge you have encountered and some of the ways that you tackled the problem.
I have difficulty prioritizing when I have a lot of different tasks to do. For example, this week I have a ton of emails to answer, plane tickets to book for an event, and other short-term tasks while I am also behind on my longer-term tasks like my paper and the July newsletter. I try to time-block where I spend the morning completing as many small tasks as I can. Then, after lunch, I work on my paper/ newsletter. One hour before I end for the day, I go back to my email and respond to any new emails I have and write down the short-term tasks I need to do in the morning in order of importance.
Week Five:
What new skills and/or knowledge have you gained from your summer experience? Have you met anyone who has been instrumental in shaping/helping you conduct your project? Briefly, how has this person impacted you? What have you learned about leadership from this individual, and how might it influence your actions, work, and self in the future?
I have gained a lot more knowledge of the legal field and where I want my career to go. Lael Chester has been enormously helpful to me in this internship. She has insisted I sit in on every meeting so I meet as many people as possible in many different fields and see what aspects I like. She also shares with me about her vast career experience to help me see what is good and what is bad about each career option. She gives me plenty of different kinds of work which also help me gain several different skills. She has been a super kind and helpful leader which inspires me to behave the same way when I am in the position where people are working under me.
Hi Lizzy, great to hear that your time at the Justice Lab has given you exposure to such a network of resources, skills, and people! Such important work you're doing--I'd be interested to hear more about the "emerging adult" justice leg of the project, which it sounds like you've been working in considerably for the past few weeks.
Week 1: As you set out on your research or community engagement project, do you find yourself experiencing any worries or insecurities about saying something that’s already been said? How do we as researchers and/or volunteers learn to address or set aside those insecurities or, better yet, to use them to our advantage?
Hi! This summer, I am working with FEDETUR, the Federation of Tourism Enterprises in Chile on understanding the current state of carbon counting and emissions reduction in Chilean tourism. I have some worries about explaining certain aspects of sustainable tourism to Chilean contacts if they already know them. This week, I am getting a better sense of the carbon counting and emissions reduction / environmental impact work done within Chilean tourism enterprises already. I also realize the reemphasis on these themes could help further grow sustainable choices in Chile, so repeating a very valid issue should perhaps not be of large concern given the scope of the project.
From a more obvious perspective, I have some insecurities about the language barrier between myself and those I will work with, as I am working fully in Spanish. While I feel fluent, Spanish is not my native language, and Chilean Spanish is especially known for being quite distinctive and hard to understand for native Spanish speakers, so I do not catch 100% of what is said. I’m filling the gaps quite quickly. This barrier has also made me think about how to use my perspective especially within Chile.
Chilean universities require students to pursue internships during their college years, so doing what I’m doing is quite common in my organization. However, they have never had a foreign intern, so I am thinking about the ways I might best serve them through my perspective. This might be helping with English communications and research or providing a US perspective on the tourism sphere. I look forward to learning more.
Your project sounds amazing, Harrison! This seems like a great extension of some of the research questions you addressed last summer
Week Four:
What challenges and/or difficulties have you encountered and how did you go about resolving them? Speak to a specific challenge you have encountered and some of the ways that you tackled the problem.
One challenge that I have encountered a bit is the cultural difference. While Ireland isn't incredibly different from the States, at times the cultural differences can be a little jarring. This is especially noticeable when I am working on collecting literature for background information for the literature review I am working on because it is specific to Ireland and Irish history regarding mental health. It is also quite noticeable socially as well. For example, if I go to a more rural part of Ireland, their accents are usually pretty thick and some even speak Irish Gaelic, so it can be a bit difficult to understand.
I've found the most helpful approach in these situations is to be patient with myself and be willing to ask questions. I will often speak with my Research Advisor about specifics of Ireland's mental health history or Irish culture. She has also been incredibly helpful in explaining certain Irish colloquialisms that confused me at first and has given me a lot of recommendations for places to go or fun events in the area that have helped me become more familiar with Ireland and Irish culture.
Hope you enjoyed Dublin! Mental Health Ireland seems like an incredibly impactful organization, and I'm excited to hear more about your time in the UK
Week Five:
Q: What new skills and/or knowledge have you gained from your summer experience? Have you met anyone who has been instrumental in shaping/helping you conduct your project? Briefly, how has this person impacted you? What have you learned about leadership from this individual, and how might it influence your actions, work, and self in the future?
A: As someone whose primary interest is in literary studies, I had many enduring concerns about my work’s contribution to the “public good,” as it is formulated by the Laidlaw Foundation. This summer, under the instruction of so many seminal literary scholars, I’ve arrived at a better understanding of the (ethical, social, political) “value” of literary studies in the 21st century.
In addition to my project commitments, I’ve been attending many seminars and lectures in the Faculty of English in my own time. In one of these talks, visiting Professor Kevin Quashie lectured on contemporary Black literary criticism in a world-context structured by insurgency, disaster, and crisis. As Professor Quashie remarked, we think of aesthetics as antagonistic to—in the case of Black literary arts—racial matters, as if aesthetic discourse were in conflict with the political contexts of these works. Although my project is more outwardly 'humanitarian' this summer, throughout the Laidlaw program I've been thinking a lot about what my interest in literary studies means more generally for the kind of work I'm interested in pursuing—about what it means to attend to sentences in times of global crisis. There are no easy answers to this question, of course, but part of what I've valued so deeply about my time in Oxford is that I'm coming away with a more comprehensive understanding of literary studies as something entangled with, attentive to, and compatible with the public good.
Week Four:
Q: What challenges and/or difficulties have you encountered and how did you go about resolving them? Speak to a specific challenge you have encountered and some of the ways that you tackled the problem.
A: I am the first undergraduate to visit the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, and because of this the terms of my status are at times unclear. Part of this I attribute to institutional differences from the U.S.: the same culture of undergraduate research assistantships is absent at Oxford, and, I assume, UK universities at large. For me, this means I am working with a high degree of independence, and find myself looking for ways to step in without over-stepping. Above all, this has been a challenging but valuable exercise in communication for me: I've been required to request ways to get more involved and self-advocate for my desire and ability to do so.
Week Three:
Q: What does a typical day look like this summer? Aside from a narrative description, upload a photo, video and/or other media submission!
A: [Attached is a photo from a weekly internal group seminar at OCLW, where we workshop visiting researchers’ works-in-progress.]
No day looks exactly the same this summer—a flexibility which I became acclimated to last summer—especially given most time is spent independently. Here’s one day in the life:
We have a weekly internal seminar for visiting researchers at OCLW on Tuesdays, where we workshop visiting researchers’ works-in-progress—whether those be books under contract, a manuscript proposal, or conference preparation. This week, we looked at a visiting professor’s book project on racial formation in transpacific Chinese-American auto/biographical writing (for privacy/discretion, I will keep my descriptions a bit vague!). Later in the day, I worked on a seminar report for the “Storytelling and Identities in Contemporary Namibia” workshop that I mentioned in a previous post, which will be used by faculty at Oxford and the University of Cape Town in the Narrative Intervention project. Because much of the work is informed by seminal postcolonial theorists, I've spent some time reading primary/secondary literature on Chinua Achebe, Steve Biko, Paulo Freire, and Binyavanga Wainaina. I also read up on some past initiatives by the research hub, which has been in progress since 2019. I spent the evening at a book launch for the Centre, which focused on the contemporary medical memoir from a non-Western perspective.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pzFIjwheLCmzECqNuO0_c9lL5KRYmUtU/view?usp=share_link
Week One:
If your project this summer differs from your project last summer, has last summer’s project influenced your project this year, and if so how? If your project is different, what tools have you developed to help you work on this project?
This summer, my project differs greatly from what I worked on last summer. I'm exploring a field that is still very new to me and in which I hope to continue gaining experience in: film and media. The organization I'm working with, the Manilatown Heritage Foundation (MHF), has a Media team that works on media projects to shine light on the history and legacy of the International Hotel in San Francisco. I myself was exposed to the I-Hotel in my Intro to Asian American Studies class, when we watched Curtis Choy's 1983 documentary, The Fall of the I-Hotel together. This documentary was moving and powerful, providing an in-depth view into the I-Hotel and its importance to the Filipino elderly immigrants, Manongs, who lived there.
From when I was a child, I was drawn to film; films I watched growing up were immensely powerful, making me think critically and feel so much emotion. As I venture more and more down the filmmaking path, I am constantly reaffirmed of the power that film has on people, and I think that it is especially important towards illuminating parts of history that are often unknown and untaught (like the I-Hotel).
Throughout this past year, I've developed technical skills in filmmaking—such as how to use a filming camera, audio and lighting equipment, and editing software. These skills will only be expanded upon and honed upon throughout my time working with MHF; I'm so grateful that my mentor, Chet Canlas, is willing to teach me technical skills and guide me throughout the production and post-production processes of our media projects. I also strive to keep developing skills of interviewing speakers and collaborating with others while on set.
I've loved working with MHF so far and feel that I've already learned so much. I look forward to the weeks to come and continuing to explore the beautiful city of San Francisco :)
Rosie—so exciting to watch you develop and refine your filmmaking skills! MHF seems like a great fit for you this summer, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about what sounds like an incredibly meaningful project on the I-Hotel.
Week 2:
Q: If your project connects with your research from last summer, explain the ways in which it picks up on themes, issues, or questions that are important to you. How are you expanding on your project from last summer? How is your understanding of this topic evolving?
If you are doing a leadership-in-action or community engagement project, how do you interact with community members, and what kind of conversations are you having? How do you connect with this community of people, and what common cause do you find?
A: In the first seminar I attended, “Storytelling and Identities in Contemporary Namibia,” I was challenged to think more about what it means to access, engage with, and relate to a story. If the early stages of my research last summer were concerned with envisioning an “implied reader”—who exists as a function of the work—then this summer I am more concerned with the “actual reader”—whose responses are determined by their contextual environments.
As Professor Elleke Boehmer remarked in her opening notes, “a text can only speak to us if it can be grounded in or related to context.” During the process of narrative identification, there is a moment in which the “story from the outside” must be transposed, accommodated, and interiorized into the “situation from the inside.” In learning of Wordsworth’s daffodils, for example—a lyric image oft deployed as an artifact of British cultural imperialism—students do not register the sign until it is spoken of analogically as like the native cosmos flower. In other terms, the narrative sign must be domesticated into an internal frame of reference. (For readers of Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, this example will ring familiar.) This example stimulated many questions for me: how does inequality configure an individual’s relationship to storytelling in the so-called global margins? How might they get hold of storytelling to respond to oppressive and unequal environments? to articulate their contexts and re-articulate their futures?