Editor’s Gloss

This issue is an exploration of the ephemeral—the stray thoughts, the side
conversations, the discarded scraps, and false starts that inform a published work of
scholarship, usually invisibly. In putting together this collection of work, I wanted to
make these traces the focal point, since so much of our actual thinking takes place in
spaces of indeterminacy and interpersonal connection. These momentary and provisional
collectives—
what Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing describes as “patchy assemblages”—
spark new modes of working, thinking, and being together in higher education as well
as sharing the outputs of such collaboration.1 The pieces in this issue collectively ask
the following: What emerges from connection, engagement, amplification, thinkingtogether
across disciplinary spaces and ways of knowing? How do we make manifest
the relationship- and process-oriented modes of working that shape scholarly thought?
And, conversely, how are our thoughts and ideas circumscribed by the institutional,
hierarchical, and infrastructural systems we have inherited, as well as the tools and
technologies we work with?