Dr. Kacy McKinney is a critical feminist geographer and visual artist. She is an instructional faculty member in the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning, where she is focused on the undergraduate major in Community Development, bringing international perspectives into the study of community development. Her past research has focused on the relationship between technological and agricultural change, and labor migration and land rights in Brazil and India. Her current research is in partnership with Street Roots and the Independent Publishing Resource Center, and is focused on using comics to change the narrative on student houselessness through collaborative ethnographic cartooning. Her work has appeared in publications such as Geoforum, Journal of Peasant Studies, ACME: International E-Journal for Critical Geographers, and in books published through the University of Toronto Press and Routledge. At PSU, she is also the chair of the Belonging, Dignity, and Justice Committee in the Toulan School; an affiliated faculty member in Comics Studies; and a member of the Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative. For more information on her current research and links to recent media coverage on the project see here.
Dr. McKinney worked closely with IIP to discuss goals for the project, set expectations with the artists involved, and facilitate a license with Street Roots. Currently, IIP and Dr. McKinney are working toward the goal of expanding the reach of the project.
Olivia DelGandio: Can you start by telling me a little about your background and experience?
Kacy McKinney: Sure, I’m a critical feminist geographer and I’m in the urban studies and planning department. I mostly teach urban studies and community development. When I moved to Portland and started at PSU, I was interested in local engagement so I volunteered at Sisters of the Road in Old Town-Chinatown which is focused on fighting poverty and homelessness here in Portland. I was there as a volunteer for a couple of years and then I was on the board of directors and then, finally, I was the president of the Board of Directors until May 2021. This experience got me really interested in organizing and how we think about the issue of homelessness in this city. I think the thing that struck me the most was people talking about the need for dignity and respect. That was sort of where I started thinking about how storytelling can help humanize and personalize these experiences. Then at PSU, I started to hear my students talk about experiencing homelessness and facing housing instability. Since I’m also a comic artist and illustrator, I started wondering how I might be able to bring all of these things together. How could I do a research project that centered student experience while also uplifting local artists? Essentially, I’m always interested in research that is justice oriented and stories that are often overlooked and this project combines both of these topics.
OD: That sounds great. Can you tell me a little more about the project itself?
KM: Something that is important to note first is that I was inspired by a project that used comics to tell the story of migrant farmworkers from Latin America called El Viaje Más Caro / The Most Costly Journey. That project used a collaborative process between University of Vermont faculty members, local organizations, artists, and community members to do interviews and create comics so it was really a big inspiration for me. I then got a grant from the Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative on campus in the spring of 2020 and got to work. I knew that I wanted to bring on a team of undergraduate research assistants and I think it’s important to note that this was really important to me and to the research for a variety of reasons. It meant a lot to me to be able to train these students in research methods and ethics and I also really learned a lot from them as well through the process. They brought a kind of authenticity to the research that helped me unlearn a lot of ideas about what research should look like. That’s what being a critical feminist scholar means to me; I’m always unlearning and relearning and these research assistants really helped me think differently about vulnerability in the research process. I think we, together, were able to create a scenario where participants felt really comfortable talking to us. The vulnerability my research assistants brought to the table helped participants work through some of the shame they felt and really helped them believe they had an important story to tell. Having undergraduate research assistants was part of the reason this project was so successful in my opinion. At the end of it all, we had about 30 hours of interviews, we transcribed everything, and made what we call a cover page for each participant. These cover pages protected confidentiality but were used to share the participants' stories with the artists involved. The cover pages were shared with each participant for approval and then we passed it on to the artist who drafted some ideas and started the process of a feedback loop. It’s very different from a classic research scenario but still follows the basics of qualitative research.
OD: Can you tell me about the artists involved?
KM: We really tried to prioritize local artists and people with lived experience of homelessness. We also wanted to connect people with shared identities so we specifically asked for people who identified as having disabilities, being part of the LGBTQIA+ community, and individuals who are Black,Indigenous, or people of color. We ended up with an incredible group of 10 participants and 10 artists with a lot of shared experiences.
OD: What has it been like viewing research from a different, artistic angle?
KM: I think that the medium of comics is certainly an inviting medium and one that I hope helps many different people to engage with stories that they might not see otherwise. I think comics offer this way of seeing that combines words and images which invites us to participate in the story in a unique way. The specific set up of the project also allowed for a really interesting sense of collaboration. It would have been one thing to have the students draw their own comics but to have it happen through a process of interviewing, translation, and communication, gets the stories to a place where more people can identify with them even more. Each comic is so unique because of each specific experience with homelessness but also because of each artists’ own special style. The comics capture the authentic voice of the participants in a way that a traditional interview write up could never do.
OD: Can you elaborate on the artist/participant relationship?
KM: It was totally up to the participant. They had the option to meet with the artist but it wasn’t required. Some chose to meet with them and some preferred to let the artist take the reins once the interview was over; either way was absolutely fine. One specific example was a student who graduated and went back to her country of origin during the process and the artist wanted to hear from her about her homecoming experience in order to finish the comic. The participant agreed and I set up a meeting between the three of us where she had so much to say about what had happened since the interviews. We had this incredible conversation about what it was like for her to come home. It got quite detailed, down to what food was on the table at the homecoming celebration. She described the music, the dancing, what people were wearing and the artist ended up capturing all of these details on the final page of her comic. It ended up being this magnificent full color image of the celebration that just perfectly ended her story.
OD: Could we talk about how the project is working in the larger context of homelessness in Portland?
KM: I think it works at multiple scales. It certainly hopes to change the narrative of how to teach and think and talk about homelessness. I want this project to impact students, faculty, and staff and I also want it to exist in the larger community. In both cases, there’s a lot of misunderstanding, harmful stereotypes, and various forms of oppression that exist. These things have a major negative impact on students so I hope that doing this project and having these exhibits start to change that. Coming back to the idea of dignity and respect, these comics aren’t just talking about homelessness but we’re really trying to understand it more broadly and really trying to find ways to use a different narrative - different language - to talk about the people having these experiences.
OD: Definitely. Is there anything else you want to share with me?
KM: I think it’s really important for people to understand how and why this is research. This sort of comic scholarship is a growing field but there aren’t a lot of people who know about it yet. Thinking about the ways that comics can be used to write up research was a big part of this project and something that can be used to envision what comic studies might look like on this campus in the future.