Scribe for Human Rights Works with the Movement for Housing Justice

Each year, HRP and the Department of English award a Master of Fine Arts student the Scribes for Human Rights Fellowship to serve as a writer-in-residence on a human rights topic. Since 2006, Scribes have written about Tibetan refugee experiences, implemented a creative writing program for at-risk youth, and more. This year, Amalia Tenuta researched the role of municipal and state authorities in policing and evicting unhoused residents in south Minneapolis. Tenuta is a creative writing MFA student with a focus on poetry and a background in women and gender studies. 

On Tuesday March 25, Tenuta presented her findings at a talk titled, “Militant Research, Institutional Review, & Rights to the Colonial City.” Tenuta’s research examined the involvement of the Minnesota Department of Transportation and their use of third party security for encampment evictions, and the impact of those evictions on unhoused individuals. Tenuta emphasized the vulnerability that people experiencing housing insecurity face and how it can exacerbate other issues, such as mental health. “Everybody has really bad days, but people who are unhoused don’t have the ability to have a bad day inside,” Tenuta pointed out. “What happens are things that happen to everyone, the only difference is they don’t have the access to have it inside and privately.”

Tenuta has compiled her findings and analysis into a writeup with additional appendices.  Through her project, Tenuta critically examined the role of the researcher and who benefits from the knowledge that is produced by research. She frames her role as one of the “militant researcher,” who seeks to uncover strategy and tactics to contribute to a movement. “To research is to fall in love, but at once such love breaks any convention of institutional research: what is most important about this project was what was obtained beyond and against the legibility of institutional review,” Tenuta writes. “What the data does not show, what the data cannot speak of is what we already know and knew and found in love for each other.”

Through her Fellowship, Tenuta has opened important conversations around the role of Universities and researchers and the often extractive nature of scholarly engagement with community. The Human Rights Program is grateful for Tenuta’s thoughtful analysis and the ways that she has inspired us to think critically about the research process and the way that academics engage social movements.