Cultivating the Undercommons: A CBPAR Graduate Course as Fugitive Practice in the Neoliberal Academy

This student-faculty collaborative autoethnography examines how Clemson University’s PRTM 9000 - Advanced Qualitative Research Methods course created a pedagogical undercommons. A fugitive educational space resisting neoliberal academic norms by radically embodying Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) principles rather than merely describing them. The seven graduate students and two faculty instructors engaged in the co-construction of knowledge on CBPAR, engaged in reflexive practices like collective memory work, and coauthored this manuscript as their final project ultimately embodying the CBPAR principles they were studying. The findings are reflected in six core pillars (Culture of Rupture, Power Sharing, Critical Reflection, Community Building, Participatory Pedagogy, and Experiential Activities) that were found to transform the graduate classroom into a vital space for enacting just futures. Our work demonstrates that effectively teaching CBPAR requires this embodied approach and issues a call for structurally dismantling academic constraints in graduate education to make universities true commons for all.