Serendipity, Tactility, and Community: Library Research as a Practice of Wonder

Sponsored by Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Recorded on 08/29/2019

Posted in Scholarly Communication and Research

Summary:

Getting students into academic libraries can be a challenge. Asking them to engage deeply with the materials they might find there once they arrive can be equally challenging. Drawing on her background in – and passion for – archival research, libraries, and teaching, Sonja Boon considers some similarities between archival research and library research, and suggests possible entry points for cultivating practices of wonder. She focused in particular on three aspects of archival research that have been central to her own teaching and research practice: serendipity, tactility, and community.

Speakers:

  • Image of Sonja Boon

    Sonja Boon

    Associate Professor of Gender StudiesMemorial University

    An award-winning researcher, writer, and teacher, Boon is the author of What the Oceans Remember: Searching for Belonging and Home (WLU Press 2019) and three scholarly monographs, the most recent titled Autoethnography and Feminist Theory at the Water’s Edge: Unsettled Islands (2018). For six years, she was principal flutist with the Portland Baroque Orchestra in Oregon.