UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Learning, Thinking, and Making the City Together: Graduate Student Educational Encounters with Interdisciplinarity and the City in the New Humanities Los Angeles ßà Shanghai, Mexico City, Tokyo A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Education by Jonathan Young Banfill 2020 © Copyright by Jonathan Young Banfill 2020 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Learning, Thinking, and Making the City Together: Graduate Student Educational Encounters with Interdisciplinarity and the City in the New Humanities Los Angeles ßà Shanghai, Mexico City, Tokyo by Jonathan Young Banfill Doctor of Philosophy in Education University of California, Los Angeles, 2020 Professor Richard Desjardins, Chair This dissertation is a qualitative, ethnographic study of a graduate student interdisciplinary program at a major west coast research university. It focuses on educational encounters that occur between the student members of the program. The program is part of current trends to reinvigorate the humanities through engagement with other professional disciplines. These new areas have been organized around the banner of the new humanities, which often address large-scale, global problems through the creation of new knowledge frameworks and experimental methodologies. The program that was studied combines the humanities with spatial disciplines to understand contemporary cities in Asia Pacific, notably Los Angeles, Tokyo, Mexico City, and Shanghai. This ii dissertation examines the program from an educational standpoint, focusing on the pedagogical processes at work within and the long-term effects that it had on students, including trajectories of research and professional practice, as well as their understanding of contemporary cities. It argues that through a variety of encounters that are structured within the educational space, new interdisciplinary academic identities are created, which last longer than the program itself, spreading into lives and future work. It proposes a pedagogical theory where this happens through a process of collective and collaborative learning, thinking, and making. Empirically, it draws on participant observation from across five program years and follow-up interviews with a wide range of students. iii The dissertation of Jonathan Young Banfill is approved. Douglas M. Kellner Edith Mukudi Omwami Maria Teresa de Zubiaurre Sharon Jean Traweek Richard Desjardins, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2020 iv DEDICATION PAGE This dissertation is dedicated to Future Urban Humanists & To Yellow Bean, for being the dreamer who dreamed the dream v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ii DEDICATION PAGE v TABLE OF CONTENTS vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENT xi VITA xv Preface: An Urban Humanities Overture of the City 1 Chapter 1 An Introduction to the Project 21 1.1 Project Overview 21 1.2 Research Framing 24 1.3 Research Goals 27 1.4 Guiding Research Questions 30 1.5 Scales of Analysis 32 1.6 Conceptual Map for the Project 34 1.7 Analytical Approach 35 1.8 Methodology and Positionality 39 1.9 Potential Limitations and Complications 43 1.10 Chapter Outline 44 1.11 Long Term Significance and Conclusion 46 vi PART 1 LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMING 50 Chapter 2 Framing Interdisciplinarity in Academia and UHI 53 Introduction 53 2.1 Institutional Contexts 55 2.2 Interdisciplinarity in Education 56 2.3 Working Definitions and Taxonomies 57 2.4 Critical Takes 61 2.5 Interdisciplinarity as a Top-Down Policy Force 63 2.6 Human Dimensions to Interdisciplinarity 65 2.7 From Top-Down and Managed to Something Else? 68 2.8 The Undisciplined Intellectual 70 Conclusion: Towards a Different Thinking About Interdisciplinary Practice 73 Chapter 3 The University, the New Humanities, and Graduate Education: Framing the Institutional Terrain of UHI 77 Introduction 77 3.1 Situating UHI in the Contemporary University 79 3.2 The New Humanities 89 3.3 Framing Graduate Education within the University 105 Synthesis: Radical Takes on the University, New Humanities and Graduate Education 112 Conclusion to the Chapter 117 Chapter 4 Pedagogies for Learning the City 121 Introduction 121 vii 4.1 Urban Contexts: Cities in the 21st Century 123 4.2 Connecting the City and Education 131 4.3 Pedagogies for Learning the City 140 Conclusion 154 PART II PEDAGOGICAL-CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS, METHODOLOGY, AND FIELDWORK 157 Chapter 5 Learning, Thinking, Making the City (Together): A Pedagogical Framework for Understanding UHI 160 Introduction 160 5.1 Hybrid Pedagogy in UHI 164 5.2 Encounters 172 Conclusion: Interdisciplinary Togetherness 181 Learning, Thinking, and Making the City Together: A Pedagogical Conceptual Framework 184 Chapter 6 Methodological Framing and Accounts of Fieldwork 190 Introduction 190 6.1 Positional Approaches to Fieldwork and Research 193 6.2 The Fieldwork 202 Leaving the Field 219 PART III PRESENTATION OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH 223 Chapter 7 Empirical Overview of UHI in Practice 226 viii Introduction 226 7.1 Institutional Overview of UHI at UCLA 227 7.2 Compositional Overview of UHI Students 238 7.3 Overview of the Academic Year 248 7.4 Overview of International Fieldwork 258 Conclusion 264 Chapter 8 A Compendium of UHI Practices and Project Media 265 Introduction 265 8.1 Framing: Tensions Between Process and Product 266 8.2 Project Media 270 Conclusion: An Archive of UHI Projects 288 Interlude: Two UHI Projects 296 Essay 1: Encountering the City through Film: Films from Los Angeles and Shanghai 296 Essay 2: Urban Memory and History in Shanghai: The House on Xinhua Lu 307 Chapter 9 Becoming Urban Humanists: An Ethnography of a Pedagogical Year 319 Introduction 319 9.1 Opening Scene: UHI Review, April 2017 325 9.2 Summer 331 9.3 Learning Tokyo from Los Angeles (Fall and Winter) 344 9.4 Tokyo 351 9.5 Spring: Back in Los Angeles 368 Conclusion: Becoming Urban Humanists 374 ix Chapter 10 Overview of Empirical Data and Analysis (Quantitative and Qualitative) 378 Introduction 378 10.1 Quantitative Findings from Survey 382 10.2 Qualitative Findings from Survey 402 Chapter 11 Student Afterlives 441 Introduction: Afterlives and Afterings 441 11.1 Saturday Nights at the Alumni Salon 445 11.2 Urban Humanists in the City 456 By Way of Conclusion 476 Chapter 12 Conclusion 478 A CODA: UHI at the Beginning, at the End (2014-2019) 488 Bibliography 493 x . ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Many people to thank in this wide world; you are all people who have helped me navigate both wild and calm seas, the lights guiding this ship home. First, I would like to start by thanking my academic advisor Richard Desjardins for his mentorship and friendship and conversations about academia, the state of the world, and classic rock music at our post-RAC college bar sessions. I will try to be more succinct in future endeavors! My committee members: Douglas Kellner, Edith Mukudi Omwami, Sharon Traweek, and Maite Zubiaurre. Thank you for your support, friendship, and care throughout. Each of you have contributed to this project in a distinct way and have helped me become a better interdisciplinary scholar. Doug: Thanks for always reminding me to center philosophy in education and introducing me to the work of John Dewey (and the story of owning Dewey’s desk). Edith: Thank you for providing a warm presence in the halls of Moore and always advocating for me. Sharon: Thank you for thoughtfulness, understanding of outsider positions, taking the time to have slow and meaningful conversations, and most of all always believing in my work and its place in the academy. Maite: Thank you for the anarchic energy you bring to art and life and scholarship and the wonderful Wall that Gives, I miss our explorations of trash and borderlands. xi A special acknowledgment to John Hawkins, my advisor entering GSEIS who passed away during the dissertation process. I was the last student of his long and distinguished career making educational connections across Asia Pacific. I hope to continue his legacy in the future. Thanks to all at GSEIS including staff, faculty, and administration who have been supportive over the years. Other faculty who made a difference include Rhonda Hammer, who helped me navigate the codes of the institution and always had an ear to listen and time to meet at Canters or the Farmers market. I met some incredible students teaching courses in Education, thank you for what you have taught me. Important comrades in the Education PhD include Michael Moses, Mike Ishimoto, Hui Xie, Abigail Thornton, Xiaopeng Shen, Jungwon Kim, and the all the members of the RAC throughout the years. A big thank you to all the participants of the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative from the students to the faculty to the collaborative partners in Los Angeles, Shanghai, Mexico City, and Tokyo. As well as to all the people and places we encountered in these cities. Special gratitude to the core faculty: Dana Cuff (for making it all happen), Todd Presner (for your mentorship across the new humanities), Maite Zubiaurre (again), Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, & Jonathan Crisman. And my true “boss” at UHI, and now at Workroom B, Benjamin Leclair-Paquet. Thank you also to the variety of guest faculty and instructors from UCLA and beyond who led workshops, presented work, or accompanied the field trips. Also, everyone at cityLAB. Every UHI student has been important, and your collective spirits have made the project, but a few stand out in helping conceptualize key parts of this dissertation and offered additional critical conversation and insight. These include Cameron Woods Robertson, Fang-Ru Lin, Insky Chen, Peter Sebastian Chesney, Gus Wendel, Maricela Becerra, Leigh-Anna Hidalgo, Angélica xii Becerra, Lucy Seena K. Lin, Kenton Card, Shine Ling, Ariel Hernandez, Jacqueline Jean Barrios, Kenny Wong, Cate Carlson, Andrés Carrasquillo, Nerve Macaspac, Brady Collins, Yang Yang, Maria Francesca Piazonni & Alma Villa. In Los Angeles, land of golden sunshine and blue skies for days: the UCLA Cooperative Housing Association for providing affordable housing.