ABSTRACT
This chapter features the intentionally dialogic reflections of Pengfei, a feminist scholar, and Meagan, a feminist participatory scholar, on an approach to writing often practiced by researchers in public- and community-engaged work: “double writing.” The authors define “double writing” as a research practice that blurs the lines between scholarship and collaborative community praxis and that intentionally disrupts the strict silos of disciplinarity to speak to the diverse and complex needs and interests of multiple audiences. Structured in a conversational format, this chapter gives examples from empirical research and academic life practices on when, why, and how researchers engage in – or resist – double writing and simultaneously offers a model for double writing. The authors argue that double writing is crucial in feminist and participatory researchers' public- and community-engaged work because of its ability to follow the flow of inquiry and the fluidity and complexity of multiple audiences, but that it is very often ignored or downplayed in teaching qualitative research and in researchers' practices in a neoliberal era. The conversations explore the practical and revolutionary implications of the concept of double writing in teaching feminist research, socializing novice researchers into the world of social inquiry, and navigating and challenging neoliberal academic spaces.
