Ty’Kara Turner, Kat Little, and Elizabeth Groeneveld (Old Dominion University)

As part of the 2026 SoTL Speaker Series at Yorkville + TFS, CTEI was honoured to host Ty’Kara Turner, Kat Little, and Elizabeth Groeneveld for their session, “An Open Love Letter: Reflections on Collaborative Writing.”

In this presentation, Ty’Kara, Kat, and Liz shared their reflections on the process of collaboratively writing an “open love letter to graduate students in difficult times” as part of a summer Independent Study class. This “open love letter” is an act of care and rebellion that offers graduate students words of affirmation. As students, professors, friends, and thinkers at various stages of their academic and personal journeys, they hold concern about how our current time restricts what is possible or even feels safe to imagine in academia. Ty’Kara, Kat, and Liz offer this letter as a gesture of care, support, advocacy, solidarity, and truth-telling. Drawing on the scholarship of Sara Ahmed, Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba, and Eve Tuck, this work is created through a method of feminist bricolage through a summer semester of writing with each other. They close the presentation with some reflections on the overall joys, challenges, and surprises of the class.

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• Additional information, research, and scholarship:
  • Liz, TyKara, and Kat’s Feminist Survival Toolkit zine
  • Liz, TyKara, and Kat’s An Open Love Letter to ODU Students (condensed version for sharing on social media)
  • Peer-reviewed article on this SoTL project – forthcoming in Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice (stay tuned!)