Self Advocacy with Dr. Ulia Gosart
On November 3, 2022, ALASC virtually hosted iSchool Assistant Professor, Dr. Ulia Gosart, for a night to reflect on the semester’s theme of self-advocacy. To begin, however, the attendees had to decide how they would define the idea of self-advocacy as a temporary learning community. Definitions were offered anonymously through a Padlet and included “speaking out” and “believing in yourself enough to ask for more.”
Diving into her speech, Dr. Gosart noted one that stuck out to her: “standing up for yourself.”
She reflected, “Standing up yourself takes multiple components of who you are…What do I mean by my own self? You will have multiple answers. I’m a mother, I’m a student, I’m a friend, I might be in love, I might be enabled, I might be sitting in this room at this particular time and this particular place, and I’m just situated in the specific contexts that make me feel good or bad… There are many contextual components of self that are continuously changing and continuously actually shape who we are, and how we move through our reality, how we see that reality, how we define the self, and how to act upon it.”
Self advocacy is a creative process as much as it is an action. Dr. Gosart mused that one of the core components of standing up for yourself is being able to adapt to change without compromising a non-negotiable part of the self.
Watch the rest of Dr. Gosart’s enlightening talk about self-advocacy and hear more about her journey in libraries and advocacy, starting in 1999 in Kosova. Then, take a look at this video about the regional drawing competition, titled “Children Draw War, Not Flowers.” About it, Dr. Gosart shares: “Here is something really wonderful that our iSchool helped me and a few of our students and colleagues do. It has English subtitles. The picture I’ve shared yesterday is one of the winning ones 🙂 Second part of the video features the children drawings from internally displaced communities which our iSchool supported via a fundraiser, and also a famous Ukrainian rock band music.”
Re-live the night and follow SJSU ALASC on Twitter and Facebook for more events like this!
