Don’t get me wrong…she charmed me too! Her vigor is palpable and her enthusiasm is infectious. I would TOTALLY have wanted to hang out with her at the time she wrote this. I love the passion that’s made it to the page.

The trouble, however, is that she really is speaking like a seasoned professional here, and I’m not sure she’s earned it. The way I mean this is very specific: considering some of the ways in which this type of participatory activist research could present problems for both researcher and researched if handled wrong, I’d really like to see someone with many years of experience at it tell me that they’ve pulled it off. Since she wrote this as a fourth-year student, she had *maybe* five years of experience with this approach, and that’s being generous.

Although Cushman seems to be activiely fighting against the savior mentality and leftist posing that she describes, how easy would it be for someone to eventually slip into it? Particularly as some of those she was working with seemed to be according her a position of great respect and authority…asking someone to come with you in apartment-hunting to lend your search credence or asking someone to co-sign a loan is not what you do with someone you have a truly equal relationship with, right? Also, what would the community’s reliance on that authority do to them, particularly after she’s gone?

I love the idea of what she’s doing, but some more experience on her part might have convinced me that I’d love the reality too.

However, for me Cushman positions herself extremely well because her voice and the energy and thought with which she conducts her composing is completely compelling, and I am inclined to see her more daring shows of confidence as the trappings of being a PhD student at a snooty school who is thinking and writing at a very, very high level. Besides, confidence, boldness even is needed for real intellectual creativity.

In short, Cushman completely charms me from the start as I am swept away by the energy of her ideas: there’s a quote about “shaping civic fate” with rhetoric on p. 2 and a mini-manifesto of a footnote on p. 3 and photos and more footnotes and a whole subtext of endnotes. . . . Wow. I like her!

Beyond her charm, energy, and confidence, Cushman’s lived experiences along with her willingness to be brutally honest about them lends her some authority. For example, she confides early on to the reader that people associated with RPI call the citizens of Troy, “Troylets” (3). With this she demonstrates her desire to be open and honest in order to create both utilitarian and pragmatic civic rhetorics.

Besides, Cushman isn’t a grad student, she’s a big, famous rhetorician who teaches at Michigan State.