Our Com(mon)passion: Entangled Reflections on the Backstages of Our Research

Abstract

This article takes the form of a conversation between two children’s literature scholars who are collaborating on a conceptual and methodological exploration of New Materialism for their field, children’s literature studies. Here, they address how this exploration of post-humanist and feminist materialist texts has reshaped not only their research and methodological approaches but also their institutional lives in Higher Education. In this conversation, the authors relate to the propositions for slow scholarship and response-able pedagogies, reflecting on their teaching practices and the mentoring of master and PhD students in their different geographical and institutional background, among other dimensions of what they call their “institutional selves”. Departing from Olga Cielemęcka and Monika Rogowska-Stangret’s (2015) concept of “com(mon)passions”, the authors propose a deeper engagement in the entanglements of thinking/feeling, teaching/learning and critical/creative as continuums that may open space for (new) modes of knowledge production that resist the pressure of neoliberal and positivist academia.