GRAE 2018

Ethics of Street Photography Beyond Consent: A Theoretical Investigation

It is common to encounter various forms and practices of photography that take place in city streets; from state surveillance and commercial photography, to professional and camera phone photography. Among these practices is the art genre of street photography, a genre characterized by certain subject matter and aesthetic conventions. Existing texts concerned with street photography cover a wide range of topics, including the history, aesthetics, and technical aspects of street photography. Nevertheless, most existing discussions of ethics within street photography discourse circle back to its legal status and consider ethics only within the framework of consent. My dissertation focuses on street photography and examines its ethical implications through an affective and non-subject centered approach that resists prioritization of human agency and intentionality. I explore ethical terrains that exist beyond issues of consent and focus on ethics within processes of production, storage, circulation, and reception of photographs. The study provides theoretical analyses of phenomena, concepts, and photographic situations relevant to street photography, such as cameras, light and the camera flash, and photographic archives, in order to bring about new ethical questions, and to invite further considerations and creative practices involving photography in the street.

Black Feminist Narrative Inquiry of the Outsider-within Positionality of Black Women K-12 Art Educators

Black women in the field of art education have had to navigate an arena dominated by Whites and a Eurocentric male themed art curriculum. Many Black women art educators, among others, have developed strategies to engage in dialogue about the underrepresentation of Black women artists in K-12 art education textbooks and teaching resources. Patricia Hill Collins’s theory of outsider-within positionality, which concerns marginalized groups navigating dominant culture, is the theoretical lens that I use in this study of Black women art educators’ experiences, approaches, resources, and challenges teaching about Black women artists in K-12 educational systems. I further inform my analysis of semi-structured interviews with six Black women art educators according to Mills’s concept of the racial contract reinterpreted as Black feminist epistemology. The purpose of the study is to investigate and expose the structural systemic race and gender inequality experienced by K-12 Black women art educators.

Locating Whiteness in Art Museum Education

The purpose of this study is to locate and define the potential negative effects of whiteness(i.e., identifying racially as white) on white museum educators’ teaching practices. Despite a recent uptick in interest within the field in promoting racial equity, very little has been written on the specific effects of whiteness on museum education, a notable discrepancy given the wide exposure museum educators have to museum visitors. Guided by the ample research on whiteness in classroom teaching, I hope to bridge the current gap in knowledge through observing, interviewing, and critically reflecting with several white, self-professed anti-racist museum educators who teach at a variety of different art museums. Given the inherently social justice oriented nature of the study, its design includes a participatory action research component wherein each participant (including myself) will critically engage with our practice and devise “interventions” with an eye towards improvement and mitigating the effects of whiteness in our teaching. This study will hopefully not only shed light on the shape and nature that whiteness takes in art museum education, but also begin to establish best practices for white museum educators to ensure their teaching practices are as equitable as possible.

Superheroes in the Classroom, Or: An Autoethnography of Power, Responsibility, and Community in a Critical Media Pedagogyr

This action research project is an autoethnographic account of a critical media pedagogy in a genre-based, transmedial, university-level writing course. Most popular culture pedagogy is based in hermeneutic approaches emphasizing a ‘decoding of the meaning’ of texts; a central research question of the project is whether, by centering a general elective pop-culture class on a reflective and dialogic engagement with students’ interpretive processes rather than on a disciplinary set of readings, we can engender a stronger sense of student agency in relation to media. In our ‘American Genres: Superheroes’ class, we explored the genre’s evolving representations of diversity and empowerment across various media formats—comics, motion pictures, video games, cosplay and material culture—looking at contemporary examples as well as those from the past. Our critical pedagogy practice included methods designed to transgress traditional learning relationships—including a negotiated syllabus, student-designed learning units, and arts-based research methods—so that the superhero narratives simultaneously served as the backdrop for meta-investigations of power dynamics in the classroom, with students serving as collaborators in the research. The dissertation is rich with examples of students’ creative work, critical writings, and personal reflections on the critical pedagogy techniques used in the class.

Art as Pedagogical Experience: A Case Study of Three Contemporary Art Projects

My study investigates contemporary art projects where artists involve audience members in creating a pedagogical experience as a work of art. In relation to the recent trend of the educational turn in contemporary art (O’Neill & Wilson, 2010; Rogoff, 2008), many artists have been working with participants in creating process-based projects, often employing educational formats such as discussions, classes, lectures, and schools as part of their artistic practice. However, even though these projects are intended to foster learning among participants, responses and learning outcomes of the participants have been absent from the contemporary art and art education literature--only the artist has been recognized. Therefore, the purpose of my study is to examine the educational implications of these types of projects, from the perspectives of both the artist and the participants. I examine not only the diverse pedagogical strategies and forms artists use, but also the ways in which learning occurs among the participants. The artists’ aims and purpose of creating these projects, and the learning that emerges from participants’ experiences will be discussed. As these types of projects often take place outside of formal school settings, the study may shed light on bridging the school art classroom with the learning that occurs in other settings such as museums and communities.

Deepening Student Learning in High School Advanced Placement Art History Education

My study investigates deepening student learning in high school Advanced Placement Art History education. As a result of the major AP Art History Curriculum re-design by the College Board in the fall of 2015, a new set of 250 required images was mandated and high school art history educators face a great period of transition. These new changes encourage:  (1) student interpretive meaning making, not just memorization of key facts, (2) student-centered, active learning, and (3) cultural diversity of artworks studied. Due to this recent paradigm shift within the curriculum, there is more room for teacher flexibility in instructional approach. My study focuses on how teachers are responding to the curriculum changes made by the College Board and in what ways they incorporate student-centered active learning experiences through their selection of content and their teaching methods. I will also explore the rewards and challenges teachers report in adopting these more student-centered approaches. This study will extend the field's understanding of strategies teachers develop to deepen student learning.

“Out of the lines”: The aesthetics of politics and the politics of aesthetics in children’s art

Much of what we seem to “know” and “value” about children’s art has proven over time to be problematic, as it tends to inscribe children and their art into predetermined categories that limit children’s voice and routinely decontextualize the child and the child’s work. In critiquing adult-centered explanations of childhood and developmentalist approaches to early art education that continue to prevail as dominant discourses, this dissertation concerns the aesthetics of politics and the politics of aesthetics in children’s art—a conceptual orientation grounded in the work of philosopher Jacques Rancière. In doing so, the intention is not to create a dualism between old ideas and those that are new, or the adult and the child, but rather to consider how the field of art education might benefit from an understanding of artistic engagement based in the relational and contingent perspectives of child artists, with particular concern for the in-between status of children participating in and actively negotiating two cultural worlds—their own, and that of adults. In exploring these ideas I present descriptive vignettes and a range of other qualitative field texts, which provides a narration of my encounters with children’s art during an eight-month- long ethnographic case study at a kindergarten classroom.

Compassion Fatigue: Stories/Artworks of an Art Teacher with a Trauma-Informed Pedagogy and Curriculum

This research creates dialogue on how art teachers are affected by and cope with the trauma their students experience, and to bring the challenges of a humanizing and empathetic pedagogy to light. This research will encourage teachers to facilitate meaningful art lessons that connect to students lives, creating a transformative, healing, and empowering space for students. Better preparation on compassion fatigue, collaboration with school counselors, and administrative support helps nurture empathetic teachers, leading to less teacher burnout and more self-care. I will observe, interview, and create a collaborative artwork with a middle school art teacher at an alternative K-8 school around Columbus, who focuses on student-teacher relationships and implements trauma-informed practices. Data will be gathered through collecting daily field notes, informal interviews and exchanging stories, a collaborative artwork between the teacher and researcher, and photographing and analyzing student artworks. Within a poststructuralist and critical pedagogic framework, data will be interpreted using arts- based research. I will create a found poem from the interviews and interweave the poem with a researcher-voiced poetic response. To capture the students’ voices, but protect their identity, I will create a fictional narrative with characters that incorporate the trauma that students Experience.

Learning During a Digital Transformation in Communication Design and Education: Faculty, Professional, and Student Views on Changing Pedagogical Practices

Digital technologies have become fundamental to communication designers in their professional practice. Design educators and scholars working in art and design education are thus challenged with reimagining what a contemporary design skill set consists of, and what constitutes an education sensitive to this digital transformation. Currently, the model for skills development in design is reactive, often failing to meet industry requirements and not meeting digital skills needs. The question of what a supportive pedagogical framework should be in the communication design classroom and workplace stays at the center of this study. This mixed-methods dissertation research explores the development and responsiveness of pedagogical frameworks in communication design by analyzing practices being incorporated by communication design educators, professionals, and students; investigating what a sustainable design education model responsive to digital technology change might look like.

Costuming as Inquiry: An exploration of Women in Gender-Bending Cosplay Through Practice & Material Culture

This study explores the phenomenon of gender-bending cosplay (GBC) using costuming (the acts of making and wearing artifacts and the artifacts themselves) to examine the interests/motivations/expectations of self-identified women who participate. GBC embraces the bending of the identified gender of a fictional character to match the gender identity and/or physical body of the player. The principal approach of the research design is Practice as Research (PaR) from an Art-Based Research (ABR) paradigm. Research methods include costuming, performance, ethnography, narrative inquiry, interviewing, participant observation, and discourse analysis. The worlds of text and image meld in the mixed-methods design and presentations of this study. GBC becomes a creative outlet for many who may not otherwise be making art. When material culture can be worn, an interactive embodied performance is experienced between the maker and the player, the player and the artifacts, the player and the audience, the player and fellow players, the player and cultural texts. This performance simultaneously emphasizes and challenges gender binaries, gender roles, and expectations. The communities of play collaborate to interpret and reinterpret the performance and the material culture. They tell stories that uncover insights into the phenomenon, society, and culture.

Cheri Eileen Ehrlich is an Assistant Professor of Art Education at Southern Connecticut State University. Prior to teaching in higher education, Ehrlich worked in the Education Departments at the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, and Dia: Beacon. Ehrlich’s research on feminist art, adolescent, and museums is published in Visual Art Research and her chapters appear in the books Multiculturalism in Art Museums Today and Feminism and Museums: Intervention, Disruption and Change. Ehrlich completed her doctoral work in Art & Art Education at Teachers College Columbia University, where she also received her EdM. Ehrlich holds a BFA in Painting and a BA in Women’s Studies from UMass Amherst and an MAT in Art Education from Tufts School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Sean Justice’s work addresses teacher education in the internet age. His focus is on how computational materiality affects formal and informal learning. He holds a doctorate in Art and Art Education from Columbia University, Teachers College, where he taught digital fabrication, physical computing, creative coding, and photography, to pre- and in-service teachers from across the curriculum. At Teachers College he designed and then directed the Myers Media Art Studio, a center for art and technology focused on the materiality of new media art. Prior to Teachers College he taught art, writing and technology at high schools, art schools, and universities, primarily concentrating on photography and fine art photographic printing. He has exhibited photographs, videos and computer animations both nationally and internationally. His book, Learning to Teach in the Digital Age: New Materialities and Maker Paradigms in Schools, was published by Peter Lang, in 2016. He writes for art, education, and human development journals.