OEGlobal Voices 90: Re/marks with Remi Kalir === Intro Music and Highlighted Quote --- [00:00:05] Remi Kalir: And so this team of park rangers annotated park signs. They actually specifically annotated a timeline of the Muir Woods National Monument to more comprehensively showcase the history of, again, Indigenous stewardship, the land, contributions again from many different groups of folks to make that, in this case now, National Monument, what it is today. [00:00:33] That was an additive process, in my understanding, a justice oriented process. It was also public, and so in that case it was pedagogical. It turned this initial sign, public facing, into a more comprehensive teaching opportunity for park visitors to understand the literal land that they were standing on. Welcome to OEGlobal Voices --- [00:01:02] Alan Levine: Hello listeners and welcome inside the recording studio. Here we are to do another episode of OEGlobal Voices. We try to share with you conversation style, people, practices and ideas from open educators around the world. [00:01:15] And I'm your humble host, editor, and button clicker, Alan Levine. Today is July 29th, 2025. Introducing Remi Kalir --- [00:01:22] Alan Levine: It's a wonderful day to welcome a long time colleague and friend Remi Kalir and Remi's gonna tell us about his work at Duke University and elsewhere. [00:01:30] But I've tracked him for quite a long time at CU Denver, as a Hypothes.is fellow, as a ringmaster of the Marginal Syllabus project. I'm curious to ask where it started the interest in annotation. In 2021, Remi and Antero Garcia published, I call it the "Textbook of Annotation", in the book, "Annotation" with an emphasis on it being an everyday act, like bringing it to people's everyday practice. [00:01:57] We had Remi when in 2021 we were trying to get people to annotate the UNESCO OER Recommendation. But really, I was sparked when I saw that Remi had his new book out, Re/marks and that's "re slash marks". I want to ask about the naming there on power, where really he goes more broad with annotation and what's going on in society and social justice and power. [00:02:20] I'm now looking at my own notes that say, "stop talking so much, Alan," let's get to the conversation. [00:02:25] Hello, Remi. it's so good to see you again, and like I said, it's an excuse to talk to a good friend. [00:02:31] Remi Kalir: Alan, it brings me so much joy to see you, to be in conversation with you, as we've been discussing. These are trying times for many reasons, and it reminds me that at the end of the day, we have our friends, we have our trusted thought partners. We have folks who give us the gift of attention, which I think is something that is so rare these days, is the gift of saying, I can attend to you, I can attend to the words that you've written, I can attend to the ideas that you care about. [00:03:04] I appreciate, Alan, that you, for many years, have graced me with your attention. And thank you for bringing the attention of the OEGlobal community to my work. It's just a pleasure to be in conversation. [00:03:19] Alan Levine: Oh, thank you of course we can just record everything. And have AI summarize everything and tell us what what to pay attention to... [00:03:25] Remi Kalir: Right, right. [00:03:27] Alan Levine: But first let's start out with, obviously, the intros. We ask people, because we're global, where in the world you are, and you'll gimme a map location, but also describe for our listening audience 'cause they can't see, what's your physical surroundings right now? [00:03:41] I love it. I feel like I'm watching like the classic sit-com of the life of academics in that quaint little town, right? Remi's Early Life and Education --- [00:03:51] Alan Levine: Where did you start in your world? Where did you grow up? And what did you think of school as a kid? What kind of student were you? [00:03:58] Remi Kalir: Wow, Alan, this is good. I grew up in Michigan. I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My mother was working at the University of Michigan, at the time, as an art historian, a staff position running archives. And so I remember often visiting her office in the basement of, I think it was called Angel Hall maybe-- I'll have to get the building correct-- Tappan, Tappan Hall, in the basement office. She had a little set of boxes and she was running this art archive with a bunch of grad students, helping faculty do research about Asian art. [00:04:33] How did those kinds of experiences inform my sense of self as a student? [00:04:38] I suppose I enjoyed school because I didn't find it too alienating. I don't feel as though I had a particularly strong sense of any kind of disciplinary practice as a student. I, I learned to read, I guess that was fine. And I had the incredible privilege of having a lot of support around me. [00:04:58] But, I had teachers whom I can recall their names, like Char Hancek was my first grade teacher and, Jeff Gainer was my second and third grade teacher, maybe third and fourth. I recall the names of my teachers, which I suppose is a good sign that they were influential in my life. [00:05:17] But I suppose it was finally in middle school where I got a sense of being more connected to enjoying reading, like really getting sucked into books and really enjoying that process of being a reader, in middle school or, appreciating that I could do some writing once I got to high school. [00:05:38] I had a really amazing series of teachers. I went to two different high schools and I suppose once I got into a more alternative model of a high school that was more project based, I get to call my teachers by their first names, and I got to really, think about myself as somebody who actually maybe had some academic skills. That rooted me a little bit more. And I ultimately met a mentor who, remains a mentor to this day, a gentleman named Jeff Kupperman, former professor, mentioned in the acknowledgements of this new book, who I met as a 16-year-old. And I spoke with him just a few days ago, right? [00:06:17] This is a lifelong mentor of mine who I met as a teacher. Again, like you were saying, his attention to me as a learner, when I was 15, 16 years old, his ability to help me understand who I could be as a thinker in the world and his connections to the University of Michigan and his ability to network me into my first intellectual community, has literally imprinted my ability to be in this conversation with you. [00:06:48] And so I don't take for granted that sometimes, even as a very young person, you really can make lifelong impacts on people as learners, as students, as writers, as readers. I don't take that for granted. [00:07:03] Alan Levine: That's so significant to think about the influence. [00:07:06] Influence of Technology in Remi's Life --- [00:07:06] Alan Levine: I wanna go back 'cause I think I remember right that, your mom brought home the first computer? [00:07:13] Remi Kalir: I mentioned that in the book. Mom was raising two kids on her own and she was hustling. She had her day job and then she was also teaching classes for the local Y on the side. So she was juggling two jobs and two kids on her own. And yeah, this is the other thing, like you ask the question like, who introduces you to certain forms of technology? [00:07:35] I think about that a lot as the father of a 6-year-old now, right? As I was mentioning earlier. I have a hard time explaining to my 6-year-old the idea of a computer or the information seeking behaviors of knowing that there are answers. If we look at something online, big air quotes on the word online, he has no idea what we're talking about. [00:07:56] He knows that we send messages using our phones. He knows that phones do lots of magical things, but of course, as parents really attentive to his screen time. I think between the two of us have the incredible privilege as parents of owning probably five or six computers, but no television. [00:08:14] And so I just think again about how young children are introduced to technology of their day. When it came to me, my mom was juggling us and she was juggling jobs. And so she had this whole Apple IIe computer that was a work machine. [00:08:29] But she had work to do in the evenings, and so she would literally take this computer, put it in a cardboard box and put it in the back of our little VW bug. It was dark green. My sister and I were in there too, and she would just schlep us again from that basement office at the university back home with this computer. [00:08:51] And I remember as a kid falling asleep, hearing her typing in the evenings. And that's what it meant to do work in the evenings, lugging this computer back and forth. These are the legacies of learning with these tools in our lives and thinking about-- I'll mention it this once and then we never have to mention it again-- everyone's talking about AI everything right? [00:09:16] I'm just thinking like, how do we grow up with these ideas in our mind because they're either by circumstance or some sense of intentionality. And, again, I really cherish the memories of having, in this case, a mother who was so caring as a parent and so dedicated as a professional. And this really notable memory of riding around in the back of this VW Beetle. The Power of Memory and Imperfection --- [00:09:44] Alan Levine: So many things jumped out maybe, but it was at beginning when you were remembering the name of Tappan Hall, and I could see it was you were clicking it. And I've been thinking a lot about the way we associate things like that. And you went back to the green Beetle, like you can smell what the backseat is like. [00:10:01] The power of that sort of association of things in our minds that are not directly correlated by word frequency or statistics. [00:10:12] And I think I've been thinking too about when we recall it, what a powerful mechanism that is for-- it sounds kind of cliche to talk about the brain operating like a thing, but the brain engaged. I think more about AI, it's just like you could have typed in what was the name of the tech hall at Michigan ? [00:10:34] And you would've gotten an answer, but would the experience be as rich as you remembering what Tappen Hall was? [00:10:41] Remi Kalir: Which is actually great because that's the imperfection, Alan, that we're in the moment actually. [00:10:46] And other piece of this, which is the imperfection that I love, is that this is not only a story or a recollection of my relationship to my mother and our family, but also to my sister who was barely even 18 months younger than I am. When I have conversations with her now, particularly as we've gotten into our forties and we have, we have a lot of distance, not as, we're very close personally, we have a lot of distance geographically. She lives in Europe now. [00:11:16] We have a lot of distance from our childhood. When we get into these conversations together, and we have the joy of doing so. We remember things so differently that it calls out the imperfections of my sense of memory. [00:11:32] I remember that again, my mom would shuttle both of us around right to this basement office of hers when maybe we weren't in school or she didn't have childcare set up, or there was something going on. I know that my memories of, let's say, learning how to type on a typewriter in that basement office are not my sister's memories of what she was doing in that basement office. Or the pictures that she was drawing, maybe the grad students that she was talking to that were of course, also sometimes our ad hoc babysitters. [00:12:05] And that to me, that, that divergence of perspective, kind of pointing out the imperfections, and having to tap into that through a social-- the memory is social. The memory is only elicited because I have to ask my sister, "Hey, do you remember like this thing?" And she's "Yeah, but not in that way." [00:12:26] It's all of that imperfection that actually is what I find so meaningful now. Often what's missing in the current kind of glossiness and the speed and the kind of perception of, precision that so much of our technologies these days. Apparently it affords us these things, although I tend to think that these are not affordances. I think that these are, again, like mostly delusions. [00:12:55] Alan Levine: Yeah, definitely. First Experiences with Annotation --- [00:12:57] Alan Levine: And what was the first thing you ever annotated? [00:13:02] Remi Kalir: That's such a great question because I'm not sure. What I know is I am now, again, you'll love this little, this anecdote. And I love that, Alan, you prepared this amazing set of questions and now this has just become like a good like family [story with] a little bit of like technology and, scholarship. I love it and I think it's fantastic. [00:13:22] A few years ago, we were living in Cambridge because I was on sabbatical. My partner/wife Ebony was, a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard. And so we spent the 2022, 2023 academic year living in Cambridge. [00:13:38] And coincidentally, I have an uncle who lives in the area. So we spent some time throughout the year with him and his family, and we went over to celebrate Christmas-- we're like an old kind of Jewish-ish family. And so of course we're gonna spend Christmas together, right? So we go over and we're hanging out and he pulls out a box of books and he says, "I happen to have these, I think your mom gave me some of these books for me and my kids." [00:14:06] And of course at that time we had our little one with us. We're going through these books and I pull out an old dinosaur book that my mother had annotated for me. [00:14:20] So here I am in 2022, in my uncle's place outside of Cambridge looking through a random box of books and I pull a book out and it's actually a book that my mom had been reading to me. But she had written these little notes about the dinosaurs and she put my name in the book. [00:14:40] And so I don't know when I first began to write in books, but I know that my mom was writing in books that she was reading to me, and there was probably then a sense of permission, as you mentioned earlier, these kind of everyday literacy acts are routine. There's a literal legacy of passing these down. [00:15:00] I always mention, passing down the cherished family cookbooks, in some cases like a series of recipe cards, almost like an old card catalog of recipes. We've got my old great aunt's Pineapple Upside Down Cake. You can see her handwritten annotations, I love that. [00:15:19] If families have kept books in their possession that are also annotated, I think that just sends such a lovely message to young readers and young writers, that books are cherished for many reasons. And it's often because they're inscribed, parent to a child. [00:15:37] Alan Levine: I know you've talked about this a lot in your book, but the whole idea about okay, the books you got in school, like writing them was bad. You're not allowed that you're defacing 'em. You can't do that in the library books, but I think it extends to the books you have on our shelf. [00:15:51] There was like, like this aversion to messing up. I don't know, no one ever said it, but it's just I'm not gonna pull a book off my parents' library shelf and start writing in it. [00:16:01] Remi Kalir: And I think that this is where we get into these very complicated questions about power, that gets at some of what I wanted to really wrestle with in the current book is, "Where is it appropriate to say this text deserves a response?" This book can be pulled off of a shelf and written in. [00:16:18] When is it not appropriate to do so? And again, I'm certainly not now sitting here saying, "Hey, run into your local library in] every single book on the shelf and a kind of deface or besmirch what is essentially a kind of common object, a shared bit of property. That can cross a line. [00:16:36] And I think that there are many instances where we actually wanna respect a sense of a kind of social convention. There are also opportunities where we do wanna write and where it is appropriate to contest. Or where there has been maybe a line that's been blurred that then ends up being an appropriate response to, again, some record that needs to be corrected. And so I wanna wrestle with those questions and I wanna wrestle with those questions not only in the sense of one's individual agency as a reader, as an annotator, because again, as you mentioned earlier, I believe we're all annotators. We have that sense of individual agency and we can make those decisions about the books on our shelves. [00:17:20] Alan Levine: I have another tangent and I wanna come back to talking annotation. I was just thinking about like in, in public school when I remember you get your textbook and in the back there'd be that little card where you had to sign your name. It wasn't, I don't know, if you call an annotation, but you'd see this long list of names of students before you. I don't know if I thought about it, but just the idea about who had this book before me and who will have it after me? [00:17:46] Remi Kalir: There it is-- a book plate in a book, right that says, maybe this is in someone's library, or the library version of that again, has that little envelope, and then there's that little insert card, and again, someone you would see in a textbook where there's maybe a stamp. [00:17:58] I recall the textbooks I had in school were often stamped in the inside back cover maybe, and then just write in your name or your semester or your year. And there was a class set and they would just get recycled and passed along. There are these conventional ways that people have marked books and they've done so in various contexts. [00:18:18] And so when is it appropriate to say this kind of a mark is all right, but in this context, this kind of a mark isn't. And I do pick that up in the current book in a chapter specifically about libraries. I think libraries are extremely important social and civic institutions, of course. There are extremely codified ways in which libraries show it is permissible to mark a book. [00:18:46] An example of that, of course are call numbers and what we are using the Dewey Decimal system, which I briefly describe and review or the Library of Congress classification system, which is primarily used in a higher education academic libraries, which I also briefly mentioned. [00:19:02] You mark books with call numbers. Those call numbers are a systemized way of thinking about how you organize knowledge, and it is okay. It is permissible for a librarian to say, "we're gonna mark this book with this number." It helps us to then organize where it appears on a shelf, how it appears next to other, similarly organized, again, books and volumes. [00:19:23] That's all okay, but then it is not okay if somebody takes out that book and scribbles in the margins. Of course, even those call numbers are contested. In the chapter I'm referring to here, I talk about the ways in which gender ideology and kind of heteronormative ideology, particularly around sex and sexuality, and then even more specifically around how transgender characters, authors, and issues have been in some cases really, offensively categorized by these classification schemes historically, and are currently again, in what are literally referred to as contested spaces. And again, those are marks. I would consider those to be marks of power because again, libraries as an institution, although again, very important institutions are saying "This book goes here," as opposed to there. This book is classified in this way with this number, in this particular section. And scholars again, who are concerned with the ways in which gender and sexuality appear in the archives, extensively about the contested ways in which this kind of bookmarking occurs. [00:20:40] So that, that's annotation to me. And then we have instances where that bookmarking moves beyond the formalized conventions of the library and is maybe suggested by, let's say, an author like Alex Gino, who authors this very well known young adult book written for a middle grades audience about, in this case a character, who transitions gender throughout the course of the narrative. [00:21:13] The book is banned by many schools and districts and libraries. The author Alex Gino says, alright, let's change the name of this book. I actually want to call this book, "Melissa" or "Melissa's Story", as opposed to "George", how it was initially titled. So please now go out and mark the cover, change the cover, Sharpie activism. Erase the cover, redact it and give it this new cover. [00:21:36] And so now you have an example of this kind of marking of the book in a social context as activism, as advocacy. In some cases, libraries go along with it and are circulating these affirming kind of gender justice narratives. And so there are just all different kinds of ways, formally, that libraries as institutions can mark books. [00:22:00] And I'm just fascinated by all of it, fascinated by all of it whether it's the legacy of the Dewey Decimal system. Or it's because an author goes on to Twitter at the time and says "Let's participate in a viral campaign to mark up my book", all to me suggests that we have a lot to learn about how marks reflect power and how we are all implicated in that annotative practice. [00:22:28] Alan Levine: Thinking about as a library patron, even a young reader or as a university student, you think as libraries, they're neutral, man. They just they organize things and you forget how much influence and decisions making, and whether it's bias or discrimination or controlling, that goes into-- everything has like a human element of touch in there. [00:22:53] Remi Kalir: Yeah. I don't wanna suggest that there's some type of solution here. [00:22:56] Alan Levine: Yeah. [00:22:57] Remi Kalir: For folks who are getting this deep into the conversation, perhaps add a quick comment here-- as a scholar of annotation, I am not suggesting that I am deeply rooted in library and information sciences, although I had quite a few LIS colleagues and scholars check my book and my analysis of that particular chapter in that particular case. [00:23:20] I think that I can stand by the historical analysis of what I've discussed. But it's all to say that these systems are human made and so they're of course chock full with bias. And so we can change the ways in which we categorize our books and we can attempt to organize knowledge in different kinds of ways. [00:23:38] And yet however we choose to work through those systems, they will inevitably be imperfect. There are amazingly dedicated librarians, who have been doing this work to try and figure out the ways in which, again, whether it's scholarly studies of trans issues, whether it's trans authors, trans characters, narratives, you know how then that appears and is accessible through a library as a platform, right? [00:24:07] The library serving as a platform that then mediates as readers our access to that information. These are ultimately human made decisions and there's again, been decades not only of scholarship, but really activism to try and find more humane ways of approaching this work. [00:24:27] At the end of the day, it will always remain imperfect. Those are not my original observations. Those observations have been made by many folks, but to say, Hey, if you do care about writing on text, if you do care about how texts are marked up, if you have any inclination to care about annotation, please know that the librarians are doing it just as much as you. [00:24:47] All. All right, all of this kind of mark making together, right? [00:24:52] Alan Levine: Yeah. Annotation in Different Contexts --- [00:24:53] Alan Levine: I really wanna get to the new book, but just in general, like annotation itself. We're not gonna define it, but thinking about yeah, we're taught to make notes in school as we're studying and maybe to highlight, our copies of printouts and things. [00:25:09] But where was it or what was it for you made it seem like there's more to this. This is a scholarly-- I'm really intrigued by this as a larger process than the mechanics of note taking. [00:25:20] Remi Kalir: I think that I began to see this happening, this literacy act happening in so many different social contexts that I tried to bring a consistent, a kind of consistent language to what I was observing. [00:25:35] I certainly observed it when I was a middle school teacher in the South Bronx. I've been thinking a lot about the fact that it was this summer, 20 years ago, that I was starting to set up that classroom at Middle School 22, teaching literacy to 11 and 12 year olds and seeing how they were or were not marking what they were reading. And I could see that there was something happening in a classroom setting. [00:25:55] But of course, we're also seeing this in the streets. We're seeing marked up signs, we're seeing marked up billboards. We're also certainly seeing that increasingly on social media, certainly many folks have written about hashtags and what it means to circulate messages, particularly in online spaces through things like hashtag activism, the title in fact of a, lovely and very important book. [00:26:19] And so it's all to say that I was seeing these kinds of notes accompanying texts, notes added to text in so many different contexts. I felt ultimately then, by that time as a scholar, that I wanted to bring some kind of, again, consistent language and some kind of consistent analysis to what I understood to be happening both in the classroom and in the streets or informal learning environments, but also in environments that are very much educational, but seen as not only informal, perhaps even recreational. The Annotated Muir Woods National Monument --- [00:26:53] Remi Kalir: I'd be remiss not to mention because this has just happened, that the opening kind of substantive example that I give in the new book about annotation as a critical act, as a civic act is at a park, the Muir Woods National Monument, about a 20 minute drive outside of San Francisco. [00:27:13] A few years ago, National Park rangers, working with an interpretive team took an existing sign that was incomplete. It was an incomplete rendering of the history of these woods that largely erased Indigenous stewardship, Indigenous history of cultural history and environmental history of this particular land and geographical area, the Coast Miwok people in particular. [00:27:39] It also erased the involvement of women, more specifically women of color, in the environmental justice movement as early as again, the early 1900s, and created a rather sanitized and rather white reading of the history of this particular area, and did not mention the fact that John Muir, who's upheld as an incredible naturalist and conservationist, was quite racist in his writings, towards, in this case, Indigenous people and really silenced that aspect of his own biography. [00:28:14] And so this team of park rangers annotated park signs. They actually specifically annotated a timeline of the Muir Woods National Monument to more comprehensively showcase the history of, again, Indigenous stewardship, the land, contributions again from many different groups of folks to make that, in this case now, National Monument, what it is today. [00:28:42] That was an additive process, in my understanding, a justice oriented process. It was also public, and so in that case it was pedagogical. It turned this initial sign, public facing, into a more comprehensive teaching opportunity for park visitors to understand the literal land that they were standing on. Challenges and Censorship of Annotations --- [00:29:06] Remi Kalir: And as of last week, [it's gone]. [00:29:08] Alan Levine: Oh, I, you foreshadowed that and I was about to say what a bold initiative to take with people, empowered to do what's best. And it was removed. [00:29:19] Remi Kalir: I believe her name is Elizabeth Villano, I hope I'm pronouncing her name correctly, was the park ranger who was involved. She wrote a Medium blog post that was put up, I think just five or six days ago now, maybe. And she was part of the team that did this work. [00:29:35] In the States, the current Trump administration has instituted a new policy for all national parks and monuments to essentially review, some might say censor, information that might quote disparage a reading of, in this case, American history, at National Parks and Monuments and land that is stewarded by Park Rangers in this case. [00:29:59] And so this was actually the first instance, not only a review that was ongoing, but actually the, removal of it, this case, the act of censorship. That annotated sign, and again, in my book, in my very first chapter, I include two photographs of that sign, thank you to, in this case, Quinn Dombrowski, who put those photographs up, openly, really lovely, again, CC licensing practice there to use those images in my scholarship. [00:30:31] But you can see the initial attempt to annotate the sign that was a little bit more literal, just like cutting out and pasting on these notes. And then what was to be the more permanent version that still though showed this kind of visual annotation. And yet again, apparently it's now gone. [00:30:50] And so we see here that annotation is not only an act itself, one might say, speaking a truth to power, using powerful notes as a way of correcting the kind of justice oriented arc of understanding history. But then when those notes are seen as a threat to those in power, because of their ideological commitments, they can then be censored and redacted. [00:31:20] So this is at least the second example now of something that i've researched and written about in my book, that is now gone. And I'm aware that these forms of re/marks may not be permanent because they are often quite critical. [00:31:38] Alan Levine: Yeah. they're tenuous almost. The Concept of Re/marks on Power --- [00:31:46] Alan Levine: Re/marks, let's talk about "Re slash Marks on Power. Did the title come to you early, did it come in a flash? I'm always interested in the origin story. [00:31:52] Remi Kalir: In fact, it didn't, this is where actually it took a really good editor. I have an amazing editor at MIT Press. my goodness, Susan is just a gift to work with. Thank you, Susan, if you do listen to this. She's shepherded forward so many incredible works at MIT Press for many years. [00:32:13] And feedback from the reviewers of the book. Actually the book had an alternative title that was less precise and not quite on the mark. And what I realized is that there's something about the fact that the annotations I'm talking about, like this example at Muir Woods. Or even earlier, the example of bringing a Sharpie to the cover of a book. That is a visual interruption. There's something about these kinds of annotations that is a real visual disruption of the text that we're talking about. It is, perhaps, quite abrasive or stunning or unexpected. [00:32:49] And so the fact that the word "remark" has this slash in the middle of it does call forward that kind of visual disruption. And then of course, the fact that it is recursive, that it is a kind of iterative marking. This kind of idea that there's a repetition or a recursiveness to the marking of the text brings that re/mark forward and it is this kind of visual distinctiveness. [00:33:17] It was actually through really just workshopping the book, getting feedback talking to my editor Susan, and ultimately saying what if we just call this thing like "Remarks on Power"? That's what we're really talking about here, because these are also, of course, colloquial speaking, my remarks, these are my remarks on these various stories of power, whether it's power in the archives, in the libraries, at a park. As we read through the histories of an American icon like, Harriet Tubman, in these cases. [00:33:44] And so I am rhetorically remarking on power, but we're of course following these visual annotations, these literal remarks on ideology, on injustice. [00:33:57] And so it took on that kind of double entendre. [00:34:01] Alan Levine: When I saw the book and the table of contents, like the variety of the chapter stories, if you will, from Muir Woods to the border at Tijuana, which is an incredible story on its own. Harriet Tubman's Legacy and Annotations --- [00:34:16] Alan Levine: And then I wanna talk about Harriet Tubman and my own sort of connection. [00:34:21] But, were there more that were in the mix as well, that you were thinking about? [00:34:27] Remi Kalir: There were, Alan. I wanted to, and I appreciate that you used the word here, like I wanted to share stories, my own scholarship around annotation. I wanted to really expand how we think of this literacy act, how we think of its relationship to everyday literacy practices. [00:34:42] And how we can see this in some, again, unexpected settings and stories. And so, yes. Getting to the border, the border of course being an extremely contested space for, not only decades, but centuries upon centuries actually, and understanding that it's been a marked line for many years. That the border between Mexico and the US is a literal annotation. [00:35:07] I'll mention this again now, it was very likely annotated by Robert E. Lee. I think that, again, the historical record and at least my analysis of the maps and the correspondence from the mid 1880s would suggest that Robert E. Lee, when he was in the US Army was likely the cartographer who annotated the border. [00:35:29] It now exists as the fortified wall that it is today. And I think again, we can see that as a remark on power and from understanding the devastating legacy of that mark, to the more empowering mark of someone like a Tubman. [00:35:46] And I want to hear all about this Alan, but Tubman, who for decades was certainly hallowed and revered in many ways. There have been some incredible biographies of Tubman published recently, including the Pulitzer Prize winning book about Tubman's leadership in the Combahee River Raid during the Civil War, of course, shout out to Edda Fields-Black, who again, just won the Pulitzer. [00:36:05] I am not here speaking as a biographer of Tubman. As a reader of Tubman's annotations, I think that there is something important to be said about her literacies. And so again, Tubman's literacies have often not been highlighted in the scholarly record. I would argue that she was, literate in a variety of ways. Her annotations do not appear, either discussed as an example of her literacies or visualized. There is a visual evidence of her holding a pen and making marks to advocate for her service to the Union Army in the Civil War. [00:36:40] If I can play small role in any of this work, I wanna bring literal light to her marks. And so whether it's, again, Tubman as a mark maker or other, more infamous individuals in American history as mark makers, they've literally left their mark on not only the nation or multiple nations, but on national narratives of what it means to serve the country, what it means to be honored in service of historical events and historical contributions. And we can see that in annotations. And I think, again, there's something to me rather provocative about that, but tell me about your relationship. [00:37:21] Alan Levine: It's actually pretty trivial. When the book came out and I saw this. And I had the snapshot, school history, you know what I knew of Harriet Tubman through the Underground Railroad and that was about it. [00:37:32] I grew up in Baltimore. I had no idea she was born in Maryland. And when your book mentioned that there was this statue to her in Cambridge, Maryland. I was like, we drove through Cambridge all the time going to Ocean City. And like I drove through history and didn't know it. And that's all it was. [00:37:51] Remi Kalir: I think a lot of folks though, have done that. And again, my hope is that the social rhetoric of annotation helps us to appreciate that it's easier to see that history now when you drive through Maryland, Delaware and [the] Eastern shore. [00:38:07] That particular courthouse in Cambridge, Maryland in this case, was the first sight of tubman's work liberating, helping to self-liberate, self-emancipate, in this case her niece. And I tell the story of that particular act. It was the first of, a number of documented trips that Tubman took south back across the Mason-Dixon line again, first to liberate members of her families, self-emancipate her niece. [00:38:38] And in doing so, that spot is now marked. That courthouse square is now marked with a statue of Tubman in a kind of visual homage to liberating her younger self in this case. But it's also marked with these inscribed bricks, and I believe that those inscribed bricks are a form of annotation. [00:38:56] The core text is the sculpture. It is then again composed with a pathway of bricks that point north, of course. And so we can again read some symbolism into how those notes mark land and legacy in that space. [00:39:16] In the chapter I write about Tubman's legacy, I also mentioned the Tubman Byway, which is in this case a highway that meanders through the back roads of Maryland and of Delaware into Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. [00:39:32] There is a collection of markers specific to Maryland that are as tall, as if not taller-- I'm about six feet tall-- a standing person, that highlight historical places significant to Tubman and other communities, black communities in the area and stories that were once hidden of emancipation and black liberation have now been made visible by these place markers. [00:40:04] So they're marking place. They're marking places in some cases of refuge, they're marking places of resistance. And so the fact that often those histories were either hidden or unknown or maybe unnoticed, as you were again driving through to go to vacation again, as many folks do even today. [00:40:24] There is now the opportunity to look closer and to read more deeply. I would see that place marking, particularly given its historical significance of the legacy of Tubman, as a way in which these everyday notes, these everyday annotations are bringing forward new legacies of a justice oriented social future-- which is again, my hope at this, the kind of core argument of my book is that these notes can bring forward this more justice oriented set of social futures. [00:40:55] Alan Levine: I've driven across the country a lot and I almost never stop at historical markers. And you see the signs for them. And you know they're there, and it's like, if I stopped at every one, I wouldn't get anywhere. But one of these days I gotta pick up that habit, 'cause there's something there, [00:41:12] Remi Kalir: And that's the thing, there's something there, particularly when in a more contemporary context, they've been curated. In some cases they're multimodal. They actually have a variety of historical kind of artifacts, almost collage together. They're done so in a way that allows you to move from one to the other. [00:41:25] They're a social reading experiment, intended to, again, elicit our attention. And I very much see this as in line with how we mark history in these visible ways. Yeah. [00:41:37] Alan Levine: So let's talk about like post book, some of the things that you're doing. You're obviously doing talks. I wanna talk also about the newsletter and the remarking activity 'cause I'm hoping to needle you into starting them up [again]. [00:41:50] Remi Kalir: I gotta get it up again. I gotta get it up. I will say this, I've started a newsletter, it's called Reading Remarks. It's short and sweet. I gotta get on it a little bit more regularly, but it's an opportunity, I think, to build a little bit of community right around the fact that this is, again collective act, social act. [00:42:08] We know that people are doing this work often in communities and we're seeing annotations all around us. We're seeing it again, maybe on stop signs, we're seeing it on social media. And I'd love to elicit reader's attention to everyday of annotation, particularly when they are critical, particularly when they do again push against a kind of dominant narrative or a dominant ideology. [00:42:30] And hold some space for that newsletter to be a bit of a platform. I will say that, and I don't want to give too much away here, but I'm aware of one university this summer, they have a college program for incoming students. They've been digging pretty deep into the book. And I think we're gonna line up maybe some kind of a little bit of a show and tell sharing about how these college students have been thinking about annotation and mark making and murals in their community. We'll be able to use the newsletter as a bit of a bit of a platform to showcase the learning that they've been doing. [00:43:04] But I hope that, whether again, you're in a library or you're in a university, or you're maybe even more specifically a teacher educator or a literacy researcher or a literacy educator, that if you're picking up the book and you're making use of it and you find that there is value, particularly in an educational context, i'd love to share the story and use the newsletter as a platform for that. [00:43:25] Alan Levine: I'm always drawn to ideas where you ask people to find something where they have to go outside. Just the act of looking for a detail in a place that normally you would just walk past has always been so powerful. [00:43:39] Remi Kalir: There is the need to, as you said, slow down a little bit, to attune ourselves to our everyday surroundings a little bit more. Just like again, we can browse our bookshelves and revisit that favorite passage or page or slow down and reread something. [00:43:53] We're constantly rereading our everyday environments. We're constantly reading our neighborhoods, our parks, the built environment around us. And in so many instances it's marked and it's marked in really consequential ways. And so I wanna honor that process and I want to provide people with a new way of appreciating why those kinds of literacy practices matter in our everyday lives. Open Education and Publishing --- [00:44:14] Alan Levine: And since I work for Open Education Global, , how do you classify yourself as an open educator? and I just, I know the answer, just that you really, you act that way. But if you could talk a little bit about the decision and the process of, publishing openly. [00:44:28] Remi Kalir: Actually, i'm glad that you mentioned, thank you for doing so because this is really quite important. [00:44:32] When I went under contract for this book. And let me mention by the way, that as an academic, writing this under contract means, "hey, you're not making any money off of this thing, right?" [00:44:42] There are no royalties here. There's no like big unveil, like you're writing this book because you care about it, right? And when I did so, I was really excited to see that in that contract, MIT Press is making a decision with certain scholarly monographs that they are open by default. [00:45:00] So again, huge shout out to MIT Press. I've had just nothing but an incredible relationship with them, publishing both of my books. [00:45:08] They have been really amplifying what they call their Direct to Open program. The Direct to Open program is a commitment to publishing a certain number of scholarly books every year that immediately are openly accessible. [00:45:21] And so my work is out there. There's a dedicated open page for the book. you can download the entire book as a standalone PDF, or you can also download individual chapters. The individual chapters also have their own DOIs. [00:45:35] They've been studying, at least in the first few years of the rollout of this program, the impact on things like citation metrics. Now again, I know that not everybody might care about that, but they're finding that when books are made openly accessible, guess what? They're cited more, right? And at the end of the day, I wrote this book, not because I want folks to feel as though they can't access it if the cost is prohibitive. [00:46:01] Again, like I mentioned, 20 years ago, I was a teacher at Middle School 22 in the South Bronx, wasn't buying a whole lot of scholarly books. But I had an interest in them and I know that today there are a lot of educators, either in K 12 context or at higher education contexts who, again, given how trying the times are, may not feel as though they can spend $40 to buy a copy of my book. [00:46:23] I don't want cost to prohibit someone from an engaging story about Tubman or the annotated to US Mexico border or Sharpie activism or anything else. I want to be able to say, this for me was literally a labor of love. This for me was a investment in the open public knowledge commons. [00:46:45] I am grateful that my publisher is also committed to that knowledge commons in this open way. Please, here's the link. Just go download the book, your investment of, again, your attention as we were talking about the beginning of our conversation, that to me is more valuable than knowing you can go out and buy a copy. [00:47:05] So great thanks to those folks who do. I also just mentioned by the way, that when I do earn any royalties in any book I've ever published, I donated all of it away. I've written about that also for years. I've been rather transparent about all of that. I'm very happy that the modest royalties that I've been able to, make these books has been donated to, literacy organizations like Freedom Reads. [00:47:30] But at the end of the day, it's open. It's out there, it's accessible. And that to me is, as a scholar, so important that I can make that commitment. Future Engagement and Community Activities --- [00:47:41] Alan Levine: The last, two last things-- initially, when I contacted you early in the summer, I was trying to think, what is something that we could stimulate as a community activity. And I thought about, it's nice to have one of those, like online, reading clubs. They're hard to sustain. But I'm not closed to that. [00:48:00] When I saw the call for remarks and thinking about what if we got people engaged with that. I don't know what it takes anymore to get people engaged. But I would love to dream up and, sometime later, something we can engage this community in some acts of whether they're annotating or seeing annotating or whether they're, looking for examples that parallel the ones in your book in their community. [00:48:27] What does annotation look like in other parts of the world? [00:48:30] Remi Kalir: And that's a great point and I'd love that. And I'm open to engaging with, following along, maybe helping to create any of those ideas. And again, I appreciate that when it feels as though, if not for many people, the sky really is falling, that it can be hard. Again, it is a luxury perhaps to engage in this kind of work. [00:48:46] Yet at the same time, some of this does bring us joy. And I wanna also recognize the fact that we do need to find practices of joy, practices of rest, practices of rejuvenation, and practices of resistance, in the moment. And if this again, provides a language or a practice to guide any of that, that's fantastic. [00:49:04] But yes, I had to make certain choices about the geographies, and the issues that I was gonna highlight in the book. And I'm very aware that that's a reflection of my own bias, and my own ability to write cogently about any of that. And yes, in many other geographical settings and cultural contexts, if folks wanna bring their particular annotative flavor to the mix, sounds good to me. [00:49:32] Alan Levine: Globally, what does annotation look like? And yeah, obviously some of the familiar things of graffiti and marking, but I think looking a little bit more outside that realm as well. Picto glyphs, they're annotation on rock, and it's an old cultural act. [00:49:55] Remi Kalir: And that's the thing across cultures and across geographies, we can trace these notes back. [00:49:59] Alan Levine: All right. We'll dream up. It is another excuse to talk to you in the future. Finding Joy Beyond Work --- [00:50:03] Alan Levine: The last question I always like to ask is, since you mentioned, joy, what are some things that bring you joy outside of work, that really you put your energy into? [00:50:13] Remi Kalir: That's such a great question, Alan. at the end of the day, there are two things, beyond the the nine to five that are keeping me grounded. [00:50:20] One, in terms of taking care of myself, I gotta move my body. I gotta just literally, either it's running or actually doing something just to remind myself that we're getting outta the head and we're getting into the body. Sounds like you're planting trees, there's something about physically moving the self. [00:50:34] That is, I think, for me, really important. [00:50:36] And then as I mentioned, I'm a dad. And I'm hanging out with my 6-year-old and we're building Legos and we're drawing things and we're learning how to read. And seeing the world through the eyes of a child is an incredible privilege. And it brings a sense of levity, and a sense of responsibility that puts a lot of the rest of this in perspective. [00:50:56] At the end of the day, trying to show up for myself a little bit, and if I've showed up as a dad, as a partner, I think I'm doing all right. I think we're doing all right. [00:51:02] So I hope folks also find those opportunities to be connected to themselves, and be connected to each other, in their own lives. Maybe that brings a little bit more joy to our world. [00:51:12] Alan Levine: So good. Thank you for the time. Closing Remarks and Outro --- [00:51:19] Alan Levine: thank you, the listeners out there to this episode of OEGlobal Voices, the podcast that I get to do from Open Education Global. I'm putting on my announcer voice. But every time I do an episode, i've run counter-- usually like people do podcasts they have like their theme song. [00:51:29] I have a different song for every episode. I go to the Free Music Archive 'cause they're all Creative Commons licensed music by independent musicians. And so I found a track called "Note Drop" by an artist named Broke for Free, that's licensed Creative Commons Attribution, Non-commercial. [00:51:47] And the fun part is, I get to mention this to Remi. He might go look for the song, but maybe he'll just wait to see. What kind of weird music did Alan pick out? [00:51:57] But you'll find this episode at our site voices.global.org. And hopefully, we'll try to maybe raise some of these ideas in our OEG Connect community or wherever you're interact with us in social media. [00:52:08] And if you're listening, let us know who else we should be talking to. I'm just looking for more interesting people to talk to. I would do this all day long if it was in my future. And, just let us know through our website or where to find us. And, mostly I just love having these conversations and thank you so much, Remi. [00:52:27] Remi Kalir: Alan, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for the invitation. We'll keep the conversation going.