The Community of Scholars Program is excited to announce the publication of the sixth issue of SPARK: Legacies, Inheritances & Futures. SPARK is an eZine that centers the research, experiences, and voices of graduate researchers.
The SPARK eZine was launched in 2000 to amplify the research, experiences, and voices of COSP Scholars. Stories in SPARK stimulate new ways of making academic scholarship relevant to our communities and beyond. Collectively, research stories published in SPARK illuminate the multifaceted ways COSP Scholars are transforming what scholarship looks like, how knowledge is produced, and for whom scholarship is directed.
Initiated by the COSP Writing Initiative in 2020 and led by the SPARK Editorial Board, SPARK is committed to developing graduate writers through a collaborative approach to publishing research. SPARK editors are intent on not reproducing the systemic violence(s) often encountered by graduate writers and use a writing consultancy-based approach to working with contributors on their pieces. The SPARK Editorial Board holds a fierce respect for the writers’ intentions, and the integrity of ideas, experiences, and creative form each writer brings to the community.
In This Issue
In “Black Healing Through Spiritual Storytelling, and the Limits of Academic Practice” Samhar Khalfani reflects on their experience as a doctoral student navigating ableist politics, legacies of Black trauma and the pressures of academic life during the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis uprisings. Drawing on Black feminist thought and diasporic literature, they reimagine healing not as resolution, but as an ongoing, spiritual process shaped by the coexistence of violence and survival. Through an exploration of Black spiritual storytelling, Khalfani offers a powerful meditation on the possibilities—and constraints—of pursuing healing within institutional frameworks.
Mother and son duo, Nisogaabokwe Melonee Montano and Bazile Minogiizhigaabo Panek, address their experiences bringing their relative Ishkode, fire, back to their traditional environments in their piece “Rekindling the Original Flames: The Anishinaabe Origin Story of Fire and a Reflective Conversation Between Mother and Son” Centuries of fire suppression and colonial control over landscapes has led to the fire crisis we see today, as Ishkode has not been kept in relation with the environment. Montano and Panek relate to fire as a being in its own right, with personhood they acknowledge through the use of ‘their’ to describe fire, to re-implement inheritances Anishinaabeg have received from their Creator and the possibilities of future generations to relate to fire. Through their recorded conversation and transcript, the care and considerations of maintaining relations with Ishkode are paramount, and the pair invites readers to consider their more-than-human relatives in concrete and ephemeral terms alike.
In the memoire-based piece “Lessons Learned and Taught: Stories and Memories of Refusal and Resistance From My Parents About the Hidden Black Curriculum,” Shari Lynn Robinson shares moments from her life-story beginning from her mother’s womb into her adulthood. Using the lens of the hidden Black curriculum, Robinson invites readers into her personal memories of family, faith and migration in both formal and cultural education. By exploring how legacies of refusal and resistance are carried, contested and transformed across a lifetime and multiple generations, Robinson reimagines inheritance not as something passively received, but as an active practice that shapes possible futures in and beyond the classroom. Ultimately, Robinson reframes inheritance as an ongoing practice of carrying forward Black histories while making space for new forms of belonging.
In “The Revolution Will Not Be Ageist: My Semester Teaching Environmental Justice,” Jessica Tran reflects on her experience teaching environmental justice to adult learners, challenging assumptions about age, activism, and who belongs in social-political movements. Through intergenerational dialogue, shared cultural exchange, and critical engagement with environmental justice history, Tran highlights the transformative potential of learning across differences. Her piece ultimately argues for a more intergenerational movement, one that recognizes the value of both elders’ experience and younger generations’ urgency in the fight for environmental justice.
In “What I Inherited as a Mother: Language, Schooling, and the Early Years of Korean Immigrant Parenting,” Sangmi Lee reflects on her experiences navigating the U.S. school system as a Korean immigrant parent with limited English proficiency. Through a blend of personal narrative and critical analysis, Lee examines how unspoken institutional expectations, cultural capital, and dominant educational norms shape immigrant families’ experiences of schooling. Tracing her journey from moments of uncertainty and self-doubt to a deeper structural understanding, she offers a nuanced exploration of identity, motherhood, and belonging, ultimately calling for more inclusive and equitable approaches to education.
Raquel Banaszak’s piece, “We Came Here to Live a Good Life: An Ode to Indaanisag” weaves together stories of Anishinaabe spirituality, language, and motherhood. Drawing on earlier struggles for Indigenous liberation and the influential legacies of community activism in Minneapolis, Banaszek’s essay foregrounds two of her own original artworks that affirms how Indigenous people continue to build dynamic strategies of resistance and “speak back” to settler colonialism through Ojibwemowin, red willow harvesting, and dancing dragonflies Together, Banaszak’s essay and imagery emphasize how Indigenous peoples hold on to ways of knowing to cultivate Indigenous joy and healing as she imagine a better world for all.
In “Theories From the Diaspora: A Kānaka Maoli–Filipino Relational Praxis Toward Embodied Knowledges,” C. Kamana’okekai Lattig and pim gonzales examine their experiences as diaspora graduate students navigating academic life amid political violence shaped by U.S. imperialism. Part I uses autoethnography to powerfully situate their experience as Kānaka Maoli and Filipino diasporas, emphasizing that it is crucial to honor the knowledge we carry through our bodies as valid sites of resistance and meaning-making. Part II unfolds as a dialogue that explores how diasporas can form solidarities without flattening distinct histories and experiences. Together, they foreground embodied and relational knowledge as foundational to diasporic thought and radical imagination.
In the piece, “Inheriting the Lab: An Auto-ethnography of U.S. Scientific Violence in Puerto Rico” Nicole Márquez-Reyes reflects on her journey to becoming a scientist. More than a century of U.S. colonial rule in Puerto Rico has produced conditions of political disenfranchisement and environmental precarity that shape both everyday life and the possibilities of scientific research on the island. Márquez-Reyes witnessed how these conditions contribute to widespread displacement and brain drain among aspiring scientists, and traces her own experience moving from Puerto Rico to the mainland. It is within this context that she connects these struggles to longer histories of economic instability, military occupation and medical experimentation. By situating this legacy, she grapples with what it means to inherit a lab structured by colonial violence, and shares what ethical, decolonial research might look like when grounded in historical memory.
Blending photography, art, and found poetry, Isabella Irtifa’s piece, “Before Us, After Us: A Pakistani Diaspora Visual-Poetic Archive” evokes Pakistani diasporic identity through land, migration and intergenerational memory. Drawing on interviews and personal return, the piece resists linear narratives of belonging, instead holding contradictions of grief, joy, connection and tension. It positions storytelling as both an act of care and a refusal of erasure across borders and generations; it imagines futures grounded in cultural expression, solidarity, and the enduring presence of what came before.