Inside Notes from the Outside

by Caroline Joan S. Picart

In this innovative work of autoethnography, Caroline Picart weaves across letters, diary entries, newspaper articles, and visual art in an attempt to reconcile her personal experience with her professional identity as a philosopher and scientist living in the U.S. In part a dialogue with her past and ancestry-she was raised in the Philippines and educated in England and the United States-and in part a scholarly analysis, Picart asks what it means to be defined as a member of a specific "race," especially as a "foreigner" married to an American, living within multi-cultural America. Inside Notes From the Outside wrestles with issues that have loomed over anyone who has had to come to terms with concrete, pragmatic questions regarding identity within the interacting spheres of race, gender, class, and power. Based on the premise that discourse regarding these issues tend to be cast into a relationship of powerful vs. powerless, the author contends that power is not a fixed thing, but a subtle, complex matrix that shifts over time. A thoughtful approach toward issues of cultural difference, Inside Notes From the Outside provides a sincere and uniquely interior perspective on identity formation.

140 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

Dr. Caroline Joan ("Kay") S. Picart (M.Phil, Cambridge University, Sir Run Run Shaw Scholar & Wolfson Prize Winner; Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University; Postdoctoral Scholar, Cornell School of Criticism and Theory; joint Juris Doctor/Law (cum laude) and M.A. in Women's Studies, 2013, University of Florida) is a philosopher, scholar, critic, former tenured professor of philosophy, humanities and english, former adjunct and courtesy professor of law, and author/co-author of 21 published and forthcoming scholarly books. She was awarded the prestigious "Best Essay Award" by Dapim, an international scholarly journal on Holocaust studies in Israel, in 2016.

She is currently an appeals attorney in criminal defense at the Florida 10th Judicial Circuit's Public Defender Office; before then, she had her own firm, practicing in criminal and family law. She concentrates most of her scholarly writing on philosophy, crime and law, intellectual property, and international law though her work also intersects with criminology, sociology, film, humanities and communications, among others. She also serves as Editor to the Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series on Law, Culture and the Humanities, and as an Advisory Board Member in Criminology and Law to Cambridge Scholars Publishing in the U.K.

In 2005, she founded her own fine art and dance company, Kinaesthetics, LLC; she continues to participate in various solo and group art exhibits and has contributed many of her art works for philanthropic purposes with various groups, inclusive of the United Nations International Children's Fund (UNICEF). She was the first Filipina to have a solo art exhibit introduced and sponsored by the Philippine Embassy at Seoul, South Korea in 1992.

In 2006, she was the U.S. DanceSport Pro-Am Champion in Cabaret (a mix of ballroom, ballet and gymnastics); in 2005, she placed second in the same division. She adores her beloved Puerto Rican husband and their hybrid Asian exotic cats and German Shepherd.