Marissa's Responses to Readings

Check, E. (2006). My working-class roots in an academic war zone: Creating space to a grieve and honor. Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education , 24, 23-35.

Summary:
Autobiographical piece tracing his development as an artist and scholar from a working-class upbringing. Interweaves stories about his art with religion, sexuality, and academia.

Reflection points:
“I work in what feels to me like an academic war zone (that the middle class don’t see) where my research, teaching, and outreach is dismissed, misunderstood, demeaned, or contested.” (p.23)

I am surprised by how overt Check is in these statements that he makes, given that he is publishing them in a public venue likely to be read by his colleagues. Although he does not outright label Texas Tech or any colleagues by name, he seems to have an unfavorable stance towards his employer and academic community. I have a hard time understanding his tactic or what he hopes to gain by publishing this kind of work, with regard to his local community. He seems to be looking for a venue to promote visibility of those with marginalized identities, but at the same time he seems to also be dismissing the very colleagues who form his local academic community, stating that he doesn’t trust them, that he feels like an imposter, etc.
In terms of the narrative, I actually felt it lacking. Although he reveals quite a bit about his personal history and how it has impacted his pedagogy, I found the writing less evocative than the author may have intended. Although he gives many descriptions of the places and people he grew up with (pp. 25-26), I found these statements to read like an accounting or listing of activities, rather than carefully selected scenes that would place the reader in his struggles. It is like we were to read about the struggles, not to read the struggles directly.

As a graduate student very nervous about finding an academic position upon completion of the PhD, I found it hard to be very sympathetic to his difficulties of feeling accepted in his institution. They hired him, after all! He has a job! He has tenure! They hired him and gave him tenure knowing the kind of teaching and research he was interested in; while not all members of the faculty may have selected him, there were at least some who were/are interested in his work.

I also take issue with his statement about pedagogy: “Take care of the students’ physical and emotional needs, and the intellectual needs will take care of themselves.” (pp.31-32) I find such statements disturbing and liable to play into the labeling of the arts as “non –cognitively challenging” and lending support to notions that caring about students’ personal histories and identities through teaching and modeling activist stances is somehow not part of rigorous academic training. While certainly acknowledging that teachers should attend to physical and emotional needs is important, and indeed the forms of activism that Check discusses play a vital role in this, I think that attending to intellectual development in the art education classroom is very important. As a dance educator, I often find that I need to downplay the affective aspects of our work in order to make the cognitive aspects apparent, to the point where I perhaps do not give enough attention to affective development. However, as a student I have found that the teachers I felt who cared and supported me the most were those who had high intellectual standards, as well as a supportive climate, in their classroom. Those who emphasized emotional or activist content, without substantive development of concepts and skills, I often found to ultimately be less supportive. I doubt that Check would have been able to build an academic career if he had not had teachers who applied rigorous intellectual work in their classrooms. Of course, those who did so at the cost of supporting students’ personal growth- including dismissing ways of knowing informed by diverse religious, racial, class, and sexual identities- probably are what he is working against.


Ely, M. (2007). In-forming re-presentations. In Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 567-598). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Summary:
Discusses the ways that different narrative forms can be used as ways of informing the research process and presenting data and conclusions to the reader in a way that supports the theory being generated, draws the readers interest, and is respectful of the research participants. Includes discussions of stories in the first person, poetry, layered stories, anecdotes, pastiche, and drama as forms that have been used to share research i written form.

Reflection points:
Ely’s discussion shows a range of forms that can be suitable for not only reporting on qualitative research, but more importantly, informing the research process as new aspects of the data are revealed and considered for their meanings when handled in an artistic way.

(p.581) – Layered stories – “…the idea that one event can have many meanings and that there is no such thing as an objective truth are key to narrative research.”
I particularly liked the examples of layered stories. It seems like a very powerful technique for expressing multiple points of view of a situation, yet allowing each one to remain intact and in the voice of its owner. Partway into the example shared on p.591 I was curious what the other participants in the situation were thinking, as it was clear to me that the person’s behavior described might cause some reaction. The remaining two voices completed the picture.

Ely goes on to discuss the ethical considerations and how layered stories can help researchers achieve balance: “The attempt to understand our participants deeply, no matter our personal opinions about them, is at the crux of narrative research…Involving oneself in writing layered stories and reflecting on them is ne way of providing sufficient distance for better understanding.” (p.582)

Pastiche (p. 588) – the example of “Buddie’s [sic] with books” was particularly striking for me, because I have visited classrooms like the one described, complete with misspellings on the wall displays which frequently make me cringe. The piece makes a powerful statement about the kind of literacy teaching that is provided to lower-income students, simply by presenting the text of the teacher’s speaking along with the spelling of the wall sign. More than the lack of positive feedback, I was struck by the fact that the children’s voices are almost unnecessary to this depiction of classroom discourse: the teacher is running a virtual monologue, responding only to her expectations of the children (“No wonder they thought you needed extra help…”) and not to the children themselves. We don’t need their voices to understand the pastiche, because their voices were not important to the research subject.

It does make me question, however, how the researcher would deal with the participant, whom she does present in a negative (though possibly fair and apt) light. Was the participant given an opportunity to see and respond to the pastiche that was created? Because the researcher left it to her audience - presumably, educators and academics with pedagogical training that would incline them to see the deficiencies of Ms. Wrights approach – to make the larger interpretations, how would a less-informed research participant be able to be aware of the negative impression being given by the research?

Freeman, M. (2007). Autobiographical understanding and narrative inquiry. In J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 120-45). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Summary:
Discussion of autobiographical process as a way of researching and representing lives and experiences; describes the history of conceptions of the self/individual that allowed autobiography to come about as a form of knowledge that is valuable; offers idea that autobiography offers a form of understanding about human lives not accessible in other research forms.

Reflection points:
(p. 132) “Undoubtedly, there already exists the recognition that the autobiographer is likely engaged in a process of justifying himself or herself somehow and that the resultant portrait is bound to entail a measure of artifice, but this is not necessarily seen as a liability, much less a danger, for the aim of autobiography is not simply to depict the past as it was but precisely to understand it, to make sense of it, to fashion meanings that were not, and could not be, available in the flux of immediate experience.”

This sense of understanding and meaning is at the heart of what makes autobiography compelling to readers – an “objective” accounting of events from an outside source would not offer the same kind of access to meaning that a personal account might. The layering of meaning – and the selection of events to describe in the first place – provides insight into that person’s worldview that would not be possible otherwise. The selection of events as significant, and the meanings attached to them, likewise would not be accessible to the author in the moment of their occurrence- the layering, interpretation, meaning-making that the writer does has to take place at some point afterwards, in order to benefit from the richness of reflection.

“’[A]utobiography is [thus] condemned to substitute endlessly the completely formed for that which is in the process of being formed. {p.41}” (p.133, citing Gusdorf)
This statement stood out for me because of its relevance/applicability to so many of the forms of research. In particular I have confronted this issue when looking at art forms deemed representative of particular cultures, and the tendency to ahistoricize them; to substitute traditional forms as representatives of contemporary forms, or to substitute what in our culture would be considered a folk form as representative of all forms (including fine art, contemporary art, theatrical forms, etc) within that culture…

Our desire as readers and consumers of research and artwork often makes the “completely formed” desirable; readers/viewers have little patience for untangling that which is in-process, so we look for the version/vision that can be fixed, tamed, meaning easily ascribed to. The task for writers then may be to present the in-process, to fix it only enough that it can be seen, but not so much that it appears settled.

(p.134) “Narratives often seem able to give us understandings of people in a way that more “objective” methodologies cannot. This is because they often emerge from a true, rather than a false, scientific attitude, one that practices fidelity not to that which can be objectified and measured but to the whole person, the whole human life, in all of its ambiguous, messy, beautiful detail.”

This statement really seems to capture the idea of epistemology – of what counts as knowing and what counts as the way to get at that knowing – and suggests that attending to people as holistic beings is the preferred way. Certainly, the idea of holism may best be served by narrative, and narrative cannot be judged against criteria established for other forms of inquiry which have a very different underlying attitude.

(p. 136) “..the challenge at hand is a poetic one, the foremost aim being not to reproduce reality but to actualize and explicate it, to bring meaning into being in such a way that the world is made visible.”

(p.137) “We often do not know what is happening when it is happening. Instead, and again, we are often late, sometimes too late, and all that can be done is to tell the story: Appearances aside, this is what happened.”

(p.142)”…’poetic science,’ a form of critical narrative inquiry that would lie at the intersection of art and science and that would support not only the epistemological aim of increasing knowledge and understanding of the human realm but also the ethical aim of increasing sympathy and compassion.”

Garland-Thompson, R. (2007). Shape structures story: Fresh and feisty stories about disability. Narrative , 15 (1), 113-123.

Summary:
Working from the premise that “shape structures story”, Garland-Thompson challenges traditional disability narratives based on loss or lack with narratives where the “shape we think of as disability structures positive instead of negative stories.” (p.114) She describes four narratives in different genres and offers analysis around the concepts of sexuality and community, two ideas often missing from disability narratives.

Reflection points:
Although her analysis of the other works are certainly well written, I found Garland-Thompson’s discussion of her own participation in a disability community to be far and away the most compelling description in the paper.

I particularly loved the description of the SDS dance event where people with various disabilities create their own way of moving together and participating with the music. I imagine that many of their movements are probably more interesting and creative than what is seen at a nightclub frequented by “norms”, where people replicate movements popularized by others and seen on television and in movies. Because such movements may not be accessible to the conference participants, they find movements expressive of themselves in many regards – expressive of their physical bodies and expressive of their own ideas, impulses, and motivations. The “tongue dancing” sounded particularly impressive and creative; the author’s desire to see it go mainstream was interesting – are they searching for validation from the wider society through adoption of this activity? Or is it just an inner validity which has already been established that she is describing? Certainly, the idea that actors with disabilities could and should play parts of disabled characters (both when a script specifically calls for them, as well as for other parts where a disability isn’t specified but could be played by a disabled actor) is important, but I’m really curious about her desire for wider media portrayal – is it enough that she has found her own community she longed for seeing movies about “ethnic” families, or does she need/want a media portrayal of this community?

Tierney, W. (2002). Get real: Representing reality. Qualitative Studies in Education , 15 (4), 385-398.

Summary:
Discussion of narrative form in relation to research writing. Tierney argues for a larger scope in narrative strategies being used, but also cautions that the forms being used need to serve a purpose in relation to the research being written about – not simply replacing one narrative voice with another.

Reflection points:
(p.390) “…I highlight the difficulty an individual faces when he or she realizes that traditional texts are boring and wants to try a different format…We cannot simply assume that because the genre or voice that an individual has perfected over an academic career is no longer suitable that the individual will be able to simply pick up a different genre or voice and do it well.”

Yes, very true. Especially when the problem may not be simply that the voice or genre that the author is using is the cause of it being boring, but also the underlying assumptions about what information is worth sharing and what constitutes knowledge. Also, the duties of the author with regard to making the information meaningful to the reader – in some instances it may be that the author resists making applications or conclusions, but in some venues a gesture toward helping the reader make use of the information to his or her own context may be important – often I find that narrative structures help me do that, because a description of a person or situation allows me to think of how I have encountered similar situations or people, and then how the research ideas might apply to those situations as well. With large theoretical statements only, I find that I sometimes loose the connection to the ideas or fail to have them stick with me. However, sometimes the author will then draw out “actions” from the research – but if the author has a stance that this is not something that he or she should do, that can be another cause for disengaged writing.

(p.391) “If anything, we need greater narrative diversity rather than less, and the choices that authors make do not turn on dictates, but on epistemological and strategic assumptions about the kind of text that the readers and those whom we interviewed and observe deserve. Just as I once was concerned with the unreflexive absence of the author from a narrative, I am equally concerned with the unreflexive insertion of the author into a narrative. The use of my voice in a text is always an epistemological concern about studying/working/collaborating with the Other, to ignore this issue from an end of a narrative continuum or another is to overlook the critical relationship of the researched, the researcher, and the reader. “

This statement to me seems to sum up the critical point for the entire article – it is not simply about inserting one’s voice, but about how and why in relation to the data, the methods, the participants, the readers, and the goals of the written piece.

(p.392) “An additional concern I have with the move toward reflexivity is that it appears to be a movement away from trying to understand the world of the “other” and toward a more cathartic psychological agency of the self. This form of reflexivity represents a turn away from praxis and toward humanist, modernist ideals that focus on the concerns and inner worlds of the author.”

And (p. 393) “An additional caution is that although I fully agree that social science texts need to embrace different representational strategies from those of the past, I also hope we do not lose a concern from trying to understand the lives of the “Other.”

It is hard to understand the “other” – and while self-examination can indeed be difficult, it does not substitute from doing the really difficult research of getting inside and making meaning from experiences that are not your own. Sometimes when I read or hear presentations that are about an author’s personal experience, I start to get frustrated, because I think that person did not do as much difficult work as he or she could have. It is even more frustrating when a large part of someone’s body of work seems to be focused this way – I think – how much more knowledge and understanding you could have brought to the world if you did this same level of investigation about others, particularly others who do not have the fortune of being educated and articulate, able to voice all of their concerns and ideas and get them into these academic and other public venues.

(p.396) “I am suggesting that the author create an entirely different landscape that befits the genre rather than assume that he insertion of the first person makes a text experimental.”
The form should come out of the aims of the writing, with attention to creatively investigating the form as well as the content of the research.

Ewald, W. (2001). Introduction. In I wanna take me a picture (pp. 7-15). Boston: Beacon.


Summary:
Introduction to a book describing her teaching methods for photography and literacy. Give background on how she came to teach photography, with anecdotes about her experience in different teaching situations.

Reflection points:
(p.7) “I’m forever noticing how classrooms are set up – how the furniture is arranged, what’s on the wall, how it’s displayed. Its disconcerting to come up against a lack of sensitivity about what our visual surroundings communicate to people, and how they are affected by it.”

I have a similar reaction to many of the classrooms I have visited, only my impressions tend to focus more on the physical environment and how it allows or restricts movement. I visited one classroom where the desks were in long rows, side by side, and the desk on the far left was up against the wall. This meant that the student in the far left had to walk behind every other student in the row (about 8) to get out and back in, and the teacher likewise had to walk through the entire row to get to this child’s desk. The room was huge, so there was no reason for it to be arranged that way – but it was, and it stayed that way when I visited a few months later. It was not efficient, and for many of the students was confining. In other rooms, I have seen teachers create more flexible spaces, where tables are used in place of desks, and they can easily be rearranged and reconfigured for different activities, and open space is left at one area so students can stand, lie on the floor, and move around as they do their work – all strategies which make the space also more welcoming to me if I am visiting as a guest teacher.

(pp. 11-12) “It’s unlikely that the young people would ever have written what they did without pictures to prompt them…, and the pictures would have been difficult to decipher without the stories to accompany them.”

I find a similar situation when teaching creative dance and asking students to write or talk about their dances. Without the physical experience to reflect on and prompt them, many students have a hard time connecting to words. But, without their words and descriptions, sometimes their dances make little sense. In some cases it is because they are so skilled at abstracting movement, that although I read meaning and feeling into what they perform, the very specific ideas they attach to it are not accessible to the viewer (and I think in contemporary dance, that is the idea). Their stories sometimes function the way many choreographers use titles – to point or suggest the particular context they might be imagining. For other students, their basic performance skills are still developing, so they do not perform exactly as intended – though with an explanation, I can see then where a movement may have suggested an idea.

This is why I think it is so important to include language in the dance class – discussions about what we are doing, what we intend, what we see, and why it is meaningful to me make the experience more multi-dimensional, and allow the students to claim ownership in a way that they cannot otherwise. Although much is communicated physically through dance, I sometimes wonder about the implications of too much silent voice – I feel that it is important for students to verbalize about their experiences and write about their dances.

Eisenhauer, J. (in press). Writing Dora: Creating community through autobiographical zines about mental illness. Journal for Cultural Research in Art Education.

Summary:
Discusses how writers with mental illness create and distribute personal zines to challenge dominant stereotypes and create community through shared writing about their experiences. Includes ideas about how the zine authors confront and disrupt relationships in the medical model such as doctor/patient, reader/writer, etc to create empowerment.

Reflection points:
(p.6) “So, while I tried to separate my zine from my academic life, in the end the zine did something I did not imagine. It changed my academic life.”

The relationship between personal and academic interests seems to find a home in many forms of narrative inquiry, where authors can draw on experience to explore, illustrate, and generate theory. It also seems a place where seemingly disparate ideas and interests can be drawn together to strengthen academic work. At first I did not have a clear idea about how Dr. Eisenhauer was going to make a connection between mental illness advocacy and art education- they seemed like radically different areas. And if someone without the personal experience/motivation/understanding were to randomly combine these topics it is unlikely that fruitful research would result. But, Dr. Eisenhauer was able to make a powerful connection because she lived both of these areas, both were important to her life, and therefore she could find meaningful threads connecting the two as ideas about expression, agency, advocacy, visual representations, and community provided clear linkages in her healing process.

(p.10) “Likewise, within medical discourses, people reconfigured as ‘patients’ often experience the loss of their personal narratives and agency even though they might be asked multiple times to ‘share’ their stories of the experience of illness.”
The same could be likely said of people who are recruited as “subjects” for research that is only concerned with narrow aspects of their stories/experience – for instances approaches that use surveys or interviews with very prescribed questions – narrative inquiry, on the other hand, seems to call for an open ended interviewing/storytelling structure where participants are invited to make meanings and have those meanings heard – though this does invite questions around representation as discussed in the other papers – I think that this description of the medical model provides a very stark contrast to highlight the loss of agency common to both “treatment” and “research” protocols that only concern a narrow slice of experience, from a predetermined framework.

Palaniuk, C. (2004). Escort. In Stranger than fiction (pp. 195-199). New York: Anchor.

Summary:
Short story describing his experiences working as a volunteer with a hospice organization.

Reflection points:
I was struck by how effective this story is in such a short amount of space. By focusing on mainly just the one person and his mother, the author pulls you in to the story. You get the feeling he started to know and care for these people, but had so little time to develop a relationship with them.

The description of the afghans is particularly strong – it lets the reader know that many other patients were part of the story. The author’s ambivalence about what to do with them really sums up the challenges of the relationships with the hospice patients, in a way that just outright trying to state his feelings would not convey.

Remen, R. (1996). Preface. In Kitchen table wisdom. New York: Riverhead.

Summary:
Preface to her book; describes the process of assembling stories and thinking of herself as an author.

Reflection points:
(p. xix) “Because I am not a writer, when I sat down to write, all I had were my memories.”

This short introduction to her book – which I would like to read in its entirety – is a good motivation for those of us with no formal training in creative writing. Drawing on her years of life experience, the author was able to write about those experiences without technical considerations of how it “should” be, the way a “writer” might be able to approach the task. This story seems like a good piece for our class, where many of us are not specifically trained as writers but where we have a lot of interesting experiences and are able to think creatively about how we relate to those experiences and put them together for sharing with others.