The School for Beautiful Scholarship
“What if school, as we used it on a daily basis, signaled not the name of a process or institution through which we could be indoctrinated, not a structure through which social capital was grasped and policed, but something more organic, like a scale of care. What if school was the scale at which we could care for each other and move together. . .The practice of school: a unit of care where we are learning and re-learning how to honor each other, how to go deep, how to take turns, how to find nourishing light again and again.”
Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, pages 56-57
What it is:
At its foundation, The School for Beautiful Scholarship affirms that when we each share our beautiful offerings—that which we alone can offer—we practice collective liberation. As Ella Baker once said “Give light and people will find the way.” What does it look like for you to find your light? To not be so distracted by everything outside of yourself, but to rather pay attention to what you notice. To see that you are beautiful as you are. And to share that beauty with the universe.
The School for Beautiful Scholarship believes that the life of the mind can (and should!) be pleasurable, sustainable, embodied, beautiful, playful, liberatory, and more!
The school offers an 8 month program during the academic school year to support each participant’s study and research of a person/topic of their choice using the embodied study methods Miyuki has learned and developed over the past 20 years (with space to create and use emergent methods).
Embodied study methods include:
drawing portraits of thinkers while listening to them talk/sing
making Visual Theory Maps, collages and zines
reflective charades
nature sound walks
making altars to our learning
In addition to gathering 2x/month (for 2 hours each), there are Support and Accountability Partners that connect weekly, as well as additional office hours to have one-on-one support from Miyuki.
In preparing for the launch of the school, I spoke with 4 beautiful beings who resonated with my vision (above) to see who my audience was. Olivia Hunte, El Ambrose, Cori Wong, and Yaa Addae: thank you for entrusting me with your words! I created the following questions based on their thoughts and words.
Are you…
a lover of learning, interested in living and practicing theory?
experimental and playful?
excited about life and all of its many wonders?
sensual, a lover of nature, food, tea, and the sacred?
ready to clarify and share your Beautiful Offerings—that which you alone can offer the universe?
Do you crave time to…
heal?
not think about anything at all and to simply be?
follow your curiosities beyond the pressures of Racial Capitalism?
slip back into yourself and see where your ideas lead you as a way that is actively tied to your growth as an individual as well as the growth of the collective?
be more fully grounded in your body, moving, feeling, listening?
Do you wish that studying could be…
easeful, sustainable, fun, sacred, embodied, and tied to our collective liberation?
a container to be who you’ve always known yourself to be?
with others who are actively co-creating a different kind of world?
Embodied Study for Our Collective Liberation
An 8-month Container for Sensual & Joyful Learning
Enrollment is now closed for the 2023-2024 school year.
Please join my newsletter to learn about future cohorts.
This course was created to begin answering the questions above together in an intimate cohort of like-minded people.
Meet Your Instructor
Miyuki Baker
I am Dr. Miyuki Baker, a non-binary, mixed race Zainichi-American artist, activist & scholar living in Huichin (AKA Oakland, CA) who has been connecting people, ideas, and movements with Beautiful Scholarship for the past 15 years through my zines, illustrated theory atlases, graphic note-taking, and most importantly, in my approach to the life of the mind. I am a lifelong learner, curious, playful, and obsessed with multi-sensorial everyday pleasures like eating delicious home-cooked food, making/sharing music with friends, and napping under redwood trees.
I am a parent to a 4-year-old, an Asian co-conspirator of the Church of Black Feminist Thought, with a PhD from Berkeley in Performance Studies, where I first started teaching embodied study for our collective liberation!
I am fiercely committed to our collective liberation, which I credit Fannie Lou Hamer (“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free”) and the Combahee River Collective ( “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression”) for teaching me why. Beautiful Scholarship and education are how I connect my gifts with this wider purpose. Beautiful Scholarship is how I have found alignment with my values of living at the intersection of scholarship, social justice, and making art!
(Photo credit: Kristen Murakoshi)
Testimonials
“I loved the Beautiful Scholarship Portal with Miyuki! We had the chance to be creative, playful, and beautiful, while reimagining and redefining what scholarship can look like. I love Miyuki’s both grounded and playful facilitation, as well as the beautiful visuals they create to inspire and embody beautiful scholarship. This is a wonderful opportunity to tap into your beautiful self!”
“Beautiful Scholarship with Miyuki was delightful. As an academically trained scholar, it was relieving and also productively challenging to be invited into an embodied, relational, sensorially rich engagement with knowledge/creativity/scholarship.
Grateful for this gift!”
FAQs
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In my years of teaching in universities and beyond, I have found that a standard semester is not enough time to really dive deep. 8 months allows us to build together and with our own projects. It also is timed to end at the same time as a traditional academic school year so that we can rest during the summer.
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Yes, and I highly encourage it! In part, I’m creating the program I wish I was in when I was getting my PhD. We meet 2x/month to be mindful of those who are full-time students/employees.
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No :) You can let it emerge as we practice embodied study together.
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$80/month for Black, Indigenous and People of Color who consider this work to be reclaiming ancestral lifeways stolen by colonization, enslavement & genocide. You can also pay $500 at once, saving $140.
$180/month for people with under $30,000/year income or access to wealth. You can also pay $1200 at once, saving $240.
$380/month for people with $30,000 – $70,000/year income or access to wealth. You can also pay $2700 at once, saving $340.
$580/month for people with over $70,000/year income or folks from the global North, folks who identify as middle or upper class, people who have access to savings, investments, or inheritance. You can also pay $4200 at once, saving $440.(Thank you to Kate Morales and Sarita Doe for their languaging around costs)
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We will meet with the whole group 2x/month with additional opportunities to join me in my office hours for one-on-one time, as well as in pairs (Support and Accountability Partners) weekly.
