Educational Intimacy

Suraj Uttamchandani is currently a Visiting Research Scientist at the Center for Research on Learning and Technology at Indiana University (USA), where he previously completed his Ph.D. in the learning sciences. His research centers on political forms of learning, participatory forms of research, and critical qualitative methodologies. More information can be found at http://surajuttamchandani.com.

Andrew Kohan can’t decide what he wants to be when he grows up, but for now he’s a working comics artist and illustrator regularly making trouble at Winnipeg City Hall. A trained community organizer with roots in the HIV/AIDS movement, he’s made art and noise with grassroots activists in DC, Chicago, Cleveland, and Toronto. More of his work is available at andrewkohan.com.

Recommended citation:

Uttamchandani, Suraj, and Andrew Kohan. “Educational Intimacy.” Sequentials, vol. 2, no. 1, 2021.

Text descriptions of page images:

Page 1

Title: Educational Intimacy

by Suraj Uttamchandani.

Comic image: Suraj, a Brown man with rectangle glasses.

Text: “Context: LGBTQ youth activists”

Comic image: Four queer youth sit in chairs around a table. From left to right: A person with curly hair raises a finger in the air. Speech bubble shows a lightbulb. A person in a button-down shirt and side-parted hair has a speech bubble with a thumbs-up. A person in a hoodie points at a sheet of paper on the table. Speech bubble shows an exclamation point. A person holding a tablet computer with hand raised. Speech bubble shows “100” emoji.

Page 2

Panel 1: Text: “Chroma is a youth-led organization in the Midwest US for LGBTQ+ and allied youth.*” Comic image: Four queer youth stand with hands on hips. Text: “* ‘LGBTQ+’ youth here means ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual, and other sexual and gender minority people between 12 and 20 years old.’”

Panel 2: Two queer youth speak to the reader. First speech bubble: “We have lots of discussions about what it means to be ‘youth-led’ and that looks different at different times.” Second speech bubble: “For us, it means that in decision-making about Chroma activities, we prioritize the perspectives of the youth President, Vice-President, and leadership team.”

Panel 3: Text: “Chroma meets weekly to do various activities, from playing games together to discussions about LGBTQ+ social issues.” Comic image: a board game, a deck of cards, and a set of speech bubbles including two interlocking rings (referring to marriage equality), ACT UP, the pride flag and trans flag, and gendered bathroom signs.

Panel 4: Text: “Chroma also has a Teaching Committee, a group of youth who teach teachers and other community members how to best support LGBTQ+ youth.” Comic image: Two youth at the front of a room point to a large screen with “Yes” and “No” as headers with two columns of text under. An audience of adults watches their presentation. Text: “For example, Chroma youth gave professional development presentations to every teacher in their school district.”

Panel 5: Comic image of Suraj standing with one hand on his hip and the other hand raised. Speech bubble: “I joined Chroma as an adult volunteer to support the teaching committee.” Second speech bubble: “I joined each committee meeting, helped youth hone their presentations, and often drove them to trainings.” Other images show youth sitting at table, youth in a car driving, and youth leading a workshop with Suraj taking notes on the side.

Page 3

Text: “Educational Intimacy is the kind of inclusive intimacy that develops among people as they support each other in working towards a shared vision. You can tell educational intimacy is there through humor…”

Comic image: Four youth talk with each other. Youth 1 walks toward the right, looking upward and with a finger at their lip in contemplation. Speech bubble: “Maybe we can just say that teachers should try to make a space that is safe for the most marginalized people.” Youth 2 is stopped in their tracks with hands on head (facepalm). Speech bubble: “That’s too logical, we’re fools for not saying that all along!” Youths 3 and 4 walk toward the right. Youth 3 speech bubble: “To be fair, if it’s TOO logical, the audience won’t get it.” Youth 4 speech bubble: “HA!”

Text: “…little moments of self-deprecation, teasing, and exaggeration…”

Comic image: Three youth faces, shown from shoulders up. Youth 1 speech bubble: “ROAST ME!” Disembodied response speech bubble: “Ha!” Youth 2 speech bubble: “Drag them!”

Disembodied response speech bubble: “LOL.” Youth 3 speech bubble: “I’m a fool!” Disembodied response speech bubble: “Heh heh.”

Page 4

Text: “…empathetic decision-making…”

Comic image: Two youth converse, shown from the waist up.

Youth 1 speech bubble: “For the event on coming out, should we ask people how they came to their identity, or choose more specific questions?”

Youth 2 speech bubble: “Maybe specific questions is better, because if you asked me something broader I’d be like, uhhhhhhh….”

Youth 1 speech bubble: “That’s fair.”

Text: “…and thoughtfully holding one another accountable.”

Comic image: Two youth sit at a table. Youth 1 writes on flip chart paper. Youth 2 works on a tablet. Youth 1 speech bubble: “So then she was like—”

Youth 2 speech bubble: “I think they use ‘they.’”

Youth 1 speech bubble: “Right! So then they said…”

Page 5

Comic image: Suraj’s face appears in an oval. Text: “It’s what emerges when we pay attention to one another’s insights and feelings while getting things done.”

Four offset images in boxes representing a sequence:

Image 1: Three youth talk at a table. The two at the sides speak boisterously, with overlapping speech bubbles containing exclamation points, while person in the middle raises their hand and grimaces.

Image 2: The same three youth at the table. The center person holds arms wide. Speech bubble: “Shh, can we… can we have quiet for a sec?” The people on both sides say, “sure!”

Image 3: The same three youth. The center person holds up one finger on their right hand. Speech bubble: “When people first get into doing trainings, usually the first time they go to a presentation…”

Image 4: The same three youth. The center person holds up one finger on their left hand. Speech bubble: “…we just have them be on like a Q&A panel, so they can see how everything goes.” Left person speech bubble: “Yeah!” Right person speech bubble: “uh-huh!”

Below the sequence of boxes: Comic image: Suraj’s face appears in an oval. Text: “For queer youth activists, educational intimacy helped us treat each other well now, like we want LGBTQ+ youth to be treated in the future.”

Page 6

Comic image: Suraj’s face appears in an oval. Text: “Educational intimacy matters for learning in collective action spaces: It’s what allowed the Chroma youth to productively create presentations…”

Comic image: A series of disembodied mouths open in speech. Speech bubbles contain symbols: A book, a poo emoji, an easel with a question mark, a thumbs-down emoji, an easel with an X, an easel with a lightbulb, a fire emoji, a star-eyes emoji.

Text: “…and to generatively critique one another…”

Comic image of three sets of disembodied speech bubbles in dialogue.

Set 1: Speech bubble from left: “So Ms. Clark was there, too.” Speech bubble from right: “Oh.” Speech bubble from left: “She was on the sidelines, but I waved.”

Set 2: Speech bubble from right: “Did you, like, comically stage whisper— ‘don’t say “transgendered.”’” Outside of speech bubbles: “ha ha.” Speech bubble from left: “I did not do that.”

Set 3: Speech bubble from right: “You shoulda told Jaime to do it.” Speech bubble from right: “Yeah, I would’ve done it!”

Text: “…to envision the kind of inclusion their schools could offer… to make their advocacy as effective as possible.”

Comic image: Four youth give a presentation to two seated adults. One adult, an older white man with a giant mustache, has his arms crossed. The other, a black woman with cool glasses, takes notes. Text on a pull-down screen behind the youth says, “How to be LESS terrible!”

Page 7

This comic is part of Learning to Engage: Movements and Sociocultural Theories of Learning.

For more, visit: AndrewKohan.com/LearningToEngage

Written by Suraj Uttamchandani (a little sketch of Suraj) (@_SurajUttam, sjuttam25@gmail.com)

Art and lettering by Andrew Kohan (little sketch of Andrew) (@akohan, AndrewKohan.com)

Edited by Joe Curnow (little sketch of Joe) (@LearnSolidarity, joe.curnow@umanitoba.ca) & Tanner Vea (little sketch of Tanner) (@TannerVea, tvea@psu.edu)

To find out more about the research presented in this comic, go check out:

Uttamchandani, S. (2021). "Educational intimacy: Learning, futurity, and relationships in an LGBTQ+ youth group’s advocacy efforts." Journal of the Learning Sciences.

This comic was made possible by a grant from the Spencer Foundation (Grant #201900131). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Spencer Foundation.

©2020

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0