Ron Christiansen

I find it very difficult to encapsulate what I have done in the last three years at work. Lots has happened. And how does one prioritize what is most significant? Then, once you decide, how to represent this work? ​

As the years have piled on, I have been intentional about this role in the department. I haven’t always succeeded, but I do keep putting myself out there.

When I want to figure something out, I read a book about it. Sure, I google stuff and read articles, but if I really want to get into something I read a book so I can have that kind of slow and patient engagement with the issue.

Over the last year or so, I’ve had a similar journey with thinking about gender. While reading DiAngelo’s White Fragility, I kept thinking as much about my own male fragility.

Aja Y. Martinez starts chapter 1 of her book, Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory, by reprinting the feedback from manuscript reader reviews from journal article submissions, all of which praise her work but then suggest she needs to more explicitly define and defend counterstory as a methodology for her work.