Artistic Education
Transdisciplinary Approaches to Practice-as-Research Methodologies for Graduate Students in Arts and Humanities Departments
We have three curriculums that are ideal for graduate students who want support in rethinking decolonial processes that advance social justice efforts. These courses imbricate theory with practice so the boundaries between conventional disciplines are dissolved. By integrating disciplines that are often viewed as different our curriculum constructs new knowledge that uplifts students to higher domains of abilities and sustained skills. The learning experience is organized around the construction of meaning in the context of conflict transformation drawing upon artistic practices and research processes. The goal is to activate philosophy as an artistic practice and mode of research in order to embody it and utilize it in sectors beyond the academy.
Curriculum One
Autoethnography: Composing Experience Through Performance
This course introduces a combination of autoethnographic and practice-as-research methodologies in the fields of performance, choreography, and theatre. Students will gain experience in performance-making techniques and autoethnographic methods through writing, movement, and vocal activities. The purpose is to enhance students’ ability to understand and articulate cultural experience as singular, collective, and in-process.
This approach to using autoethnography helps us recognize power relations that perpetuate inequalities, so engaging in the ways cultural selfhood is performed while thinking critically about social norms might generate a new set of relations and possibilities for cultural, social, and political transformation. (Ellis, Carolyn; Adams, Tony E. & Bochner, Arthur P. 2010). Thematic clusters are assembled into the the following areas:
- Writing
- Voice
- Movement
- Performance
- Documentation
- Curation
Ellis, Carolyn; Adams, Tony E. & Bochner, Arthur P. (2010). Autoethnography:
An Overview [40 paragraphs]. Forum: Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum:Qualitative Social Research, 12(1), Art. 10
Curriculum TWO
Practice-as-Research in the Arts & Humanities
This intensive course is an expanded version of Autoethnography: Composing Experience Through Performance. It merges the fields of performance-making and visual practices with an emphasis on the intersections of autoethnographic and practice-as-research methodologies. Students attend lectures and create a work-in-progress in order to develop frameworks, tools and networks which enhance their ability to articulate theoretical and practical knowledge within academic research contexts.
The ambition is to create an open forum for artist-scholars by forming a convivial community of arts practitioners from diverse research contexts while exposing students to trending contemporary artistic practices. Thematic clusters are assembled into the the following areas:
- Autoethnography
- Practice-as-Research
- Situating Your Practice
in a Research Context - Phenomenology
- Mapping Practice-as-Research
- Signatures of Practice-as-Research
- Evaluation and Critique
- Articulating Practice-as-Research
- Exhibition & Performances
For more detailed information about this course, please schedule a meeting using the action button below.
Curriculum Three
Performative Interventions in Contexts of Collective Action
In this course students gain tools to transform conflict that arises in contexts where speakers of multiple languages interact. They engage in collective research practices that resignify Judith Butler’s theories in The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico Political Bind through the lens of performativity and conflict studies. Students learn to identify the force that performativity creates through facilitating translation of nonviolence in multilingual and nonverbal contexts and use performativity as an intervention to practice conflict resolution. By forming theory collectively through embodied research, students devise approaches that deepen and intensify conventional techniques often used in contexts of conflict and strategize how to activate these techniques as performative interventions. This approach activates nonviolence as an ongoing, adaptive practice of translatability to transform conflict within multiple identity groups. Thematic clusters are assembled into the the following areas:
- Autoethnography
- Practice-as-Research
- Facilitating Collective Processes
- Documentation
- Translation
- Resignification of Theory
- Embodiment & Movement
- Ethics of Narration
- Devising Strategies for Calls to Action
For more detailed information about this course, please schedule a meeting using the action button below.