In the New York Times article Answering Society’s Thorniest Questions, With Performance Art by Megan O’Grady, artist William Pope.L states the importance of interactive art. I hope to accomplish this with my project by creating a space in which viewers can write their thoughts. I want to instigate a moment of introspection in which we, as marginalized people, do not look first for racism outside but look inside. Maybe this won’t sit well with some viewers, but that it is my point precisely. There is systemic racism and prejudice driven mainly by those in power that at times has become subconsciously internalized. However, we must confront the hegemony of internalized racism, and in taking on such an endeavor, becoming, in the words of Freire, conscientização (2015). I hope for mutuality in this project in which artist and participants engage in dialogue as art, becoming a conduit for identity formation.

In my last post, Gene asked me a series of questions that go to the heart of everything we do as teachers, scholars, researchers and human beings, questions that point to the social enterprise of identity formation. While reading Luttrell’s articles, I perceived the teenage pregnant students as somewhat agentive in re-creating their identities. This made me think how Luttrell created a space for these young women in which “the transgressive image” can become an act of subversion. They were fashioning new identities out of what they could find in popular magazines that they could relate to. However, many contradictory forces were at play and there was little they had in common with the women in the images in these imaginary worlds. This exercise did not bring to the forefront the pain beneath the surface that comes from “giving birth” to a new identity. Luttrell and these young women were engaged in a subversive act of identity formation, seeing themselves from different perspectives than that of the colonizing gaze. I could not help wondering about how painful this exercise of answering, “Who am I?” was to them. They had to look at the glaring reality of their lives in which lack of representation, (“[t]here is nobody who represents me in this magazine”) and internalized racism (“avoid ‘acting colored’”) are part of their daily lives, to be discussed with someone who did not share their experiences. As Nick states, we must acknowledge the “imbalance of power.” I recognize that we as researchers must tread carefully when engaging in these acts of subversion. William Pope.L states, “letting go of a certain amount of control in order to test … ideas outside the predictable became part of the art itself” (O’Grady, 2018). I hope my project creates a space in which, if anything becomes obscure, it should be the artist, rather than the participants.

I recorded myself “laying out” my first collage. The original video was over 15 minutes long, so I increased the speed 4x and the video now is about 3 minutes.  I’ve uploaded the video to my YouTube channel.  A photograph of the finished product is below.

Before I began recording, I sifted through the hundreds of clippings I’ve gathered over the last ten years. It is important to me that each collage includes images from my “current” self and from my “past” self.  I started collecting images around the time I discovered Kerouac so these collages should be about me just as much as they are about him. Like a dialogue between the three of us.

I selected the clippings that felt like they went together and could help me make a cohesive message.  It was more of a feeling thing than a calculated thing. I like the idea of recording myself laying out the collage because it makes me less worried that I will miss something, or forget something that happened. I also like the process of “laying out” the collages because they’re not permanent yet and I’m not tethered to one particular composition.

I liked reading about Wendy Luttrell’s research because it was done in such a formal and controlled way.  This is not how I will be doing my research–so it’s nice to see the other side!

I think the variety of data she collected during both her photography ethnographic study and her “Fertile Bodies” ethnographic study were what made both so informative.  Not only did she have the work products of all participants–she also had video and audio recordings of interviews, conversations, and work sessions.  Her articles features transcriptions of these conversations or dialogue more heavily than the actual art products, and that seems really telling.  It must have taken so much time to record and transcribe every class session, but it’s what allowed her to come to such rich understandings.

These articles made me think about how art is just a conduit for understanding. Like, art is more about how someone makes the art because it helps you understand trends (data) and make meaning of their experiences (ethnography). Luttrell was paying attention to what the students talked about while making and presenting their art. This discussion of the art is just a different phase of meaning-making.  I’m struck by how much meaning can be gleaned (or has been gleaned) from just watching someone make art.

Overall, I think I have two next steps: 1) I’m going to be to film myself making my collages.  I can see the arranging and rearranging process as potentially being informative.  I would like to film it from above and have just my hands and the paper in the frame. 2) I need to start thinking about my students as human beings who have a completely separate life outside of school.  The articles about Luttrell’s photography research made me realize that there’s a whole lot about my students that I don’t know.   And changing my thinking could help me become a better teacher.

So much of Wendy Luttrell’s work resonated with me that I almost find it difficult to begin this entry. We share an interest in the space where image, voice and narrative intersect and how that space supports identity formation during the “between” moments of human life. We also agree this is important work that can be used to inform teacher practice and teacher development by acknowledging additional ways of knowing.

Her work in an urban elementary school, as she recounts in ‘A camera is a big responsibility’: a lens for analysing children’s visual voices, raises some significant points with regard to working with children in arts-based research. She highlights the challenge of “finding the line between children’s voices and those of adult researchers, who see to represent them.” The researcher unassumingly becomes the curator by making decisions on the information that is included or perhaps by the types of question prompts that are posed. While there may not be a way to remove the fingerprints, it speaks to a mindfulness of (and commitment to) the integrity of a child’s voice.

Littrell moved through this study with minimal restrictions or adult guidance. In the true spirit of photography, it is an exploration. This is something I’ve thought about a lot over the past few days in terms of my own work. While migration is the catalyst of identity schisms for all of the students I work with, I wonder if it is too restrictive. What if the themes were broader and more universal? I wonder where children might take us if given a camera to capture feelings of exclusion…and then belonging. I wonder what that voice might say, not only about individual experience, but also about society. What cultural and ideological conventions could we infer?

As part of Luttrell’s methodology of working with child photographers, debrief interviews were voice recorded and video taped. I find that this really elevates the research process to a form of analysis itself. Both types of recordings provide a richness that goes beyond word choice and delves deeper into values (listening for care) and the interactions between how they see themselves and how they want to be seen (interacting with the video camera). I am considering how I will record the interactions I will have with the student I am working with this semester.

Professor Fellner
Art-based Instruction
2/27/2018
Shawn Brown
Picture That

The importance of ensuring that children’s voices are heard authentically cannot be understated. As a child, I spoke through drawing. It was an instrument that I used to express emotions, thoughts, and interests. My dad was incarcerated for approximately 13 years. He would draw pictures, frame them, and send them to me as a gift. The pictures usually came with a note. My dad has the most elegant penmanship I’ve ever seen. I was more interested in the artwork rather than the writing. He would draw himself as a towering, muscular figure with a gold chain, shell-toe Adidas sneakers, and lots of money in his pockets. In retrospect, I realize that this is how he may have envisioned himself if he were free. As time passed, the artwork became more elaborate. He would draw cars, money, expensive clothes, etc. In return, I would draw something as well. In many ways, this is where my love for the arts and writing began. His photos also spoke to me in a way that his artwork could not.
My first memories of my father were photos. I saw contradictory images of him smiling while wearing prison uniforms. Was there a hidden joy about being in prison? Luttrell’s work seems to illuminate how audiences elicit multiple meanings from photos. My father later informed me of his desire to communicate his safety and security. The pictures that we select to express joy, pride, and dignity may convey something entirely different to another person. The audience’s interpretation differs leading to more reflexive, analytically dialog. One’s ethnicity and socio-economic background effects what images are used. Photography can capture subtle nuances that can never be express through words or art.
This historical form of qualitative research is especially crucial for marginalized groups. Dubois’ earlier work in 1923 displayed images of Blacks in natural settings. Images of Blacks that still resonate with me are Malcolm X at the window, Rosa Parks on the bus, and Emmit Till’s decaying body, etc. These images tell stories that cannot be easily explained. I hold on to them to counter current narratives of Blackness in the media. The power of allowing children to tell their own stories provides authentic data. Adults via adultism force children to position themselves according to societal directives, rules, and regulations.
The pictures of a family album, though a created illusion, is telling of a child’s family structure. I think of the imbalance of images in my family’s collection. Pictures of my mother and two brothers parallel photos of my dad in prison. Photos have the power to divide or unite. In Luttrell’s writing, stuffed animals are symbolic of the power of photos to unity different people. One girl resided in a housing project, another in a three-decker home. Both girls spoke of cherishing their dolls. Collaboratively seeing and developing bifocality has the potential to unite people from all races. Images provide the possibility of having transparent conversations about internal beliefs and biases. These conversations must take place for real revolutionary action to happen.

Project Ideas:
In thinking about my research interests, I believe I want to start looking at the photographs and images that tell the story of Black men in education. I may create this based on historical photos that have been used in media, cinema, across generates, etc. I think it would be interesting to share these images with Black male teachers and see what emotions arise from them.

Sorry for the late post.

I found the article Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds: Gender, Race, and the Schooling of Pregnant Teens by Wendy Luttrell a little problematic. This exploration of self in which pregnant teenage girls confront the lack of representation, internalized racism and awareness of selfhood, spoke to me of systematic racism and classism in which individuals — and not a lack of equity in the distribution of resources —  are blamed for their circumstances.

There were several themes in this article that struck a chord with me as a Latina. One was when Luttrell discusses Marisa’s attachment to the land. This attachment is made manifest by Marisa in her sadness about “her lost freedom of movement” (2003). How we connect to the land is also connected to our self-perception. Marisa alludes to this attachment by comparing the constrictions of living in an U.S. Northeastern city to the freedom of movement of living in a Mexican city. I wonder if Marisa saw herself as limited also by the new culture of the U.S. I was born and spent my whole childhood and adolescence in Medellin, a city seated deep in the Andes. When you step outside your home, you are surrounded by mountains. The connection between mountains and the people born in this region is immense. We are proud to be called montañeros — mountain people. I remember going back to Medellin to visit family and having tears rolling down my cheeks when I caught a glimpse of the Andes. I had not known that I missed them so much, and I finally understand why I love to go to the mountains –any mountain will do.

While reading these chapters, I often wondered how painful it was for these young girls to answer Luttrell’s question, “Who am I?” (2003). It couldn’t be easy for these young women to face their realities — lack of representation and internalized racism — and to “[grow] up hard and fast” (2003). Luttrell discusses the psychological scars of growing up ‘hard.’ I wonder how the girls felt when they discussed their self-portraits and their collages in front of someone who did not represent them as women of color and immigrants. Did they just comply because it was all they knew when most teachers were white and middle-class? Or did they rebel by only giving the bare minimum? I wonder how their exploration of self-hood and participation impacts who their audience is.            

The article ‘A camera is a big responsibility’: a lens for analyzing children’s visual voices by Wendy Luttrell, discusses a mode of visual research in which children’s voices are not obscured by adult interpretations. My question is, how can the adult researcher in her analysis allow for her co-researchers/participants’ voices to be heard without illuminating or obscuring (Tobin, 2015) the children’s narratives? Luttrell describes how children’s visual narratives in general may be dictated by the “inspecting gaze” (Foucault, 1980 in Luttrell, 2010). This echoes for me hooks’ ‘colonizing gaze’ in which marginalized groups see themselves through the lens of the power group, in this case the adults in the children’s lives. However, she argues that in these visual narratives, there may be the promise of “alternative narratives” (Luttrell, 2010). This brings to mind the promise of the “transgressive image” in which the marginalized break away from the colonizing gaze and “interrogate old narratives” (hooks, 1992). This is exemplified by Cornelio’s explanation of why he took a photograph of the family’s living room instead of his mom because she was too busy working and “waiting [for the living room] to get done” (Luttrell, 2010). Luttrell discusses how this visual narrative runs antithetical to the narrative of welfare reforms that portrays single mothers’ work ethics as lacking.

This article exemplifies for me the vulnerability of marginalized groups such as immigrant children and youth. I thought it was very courageous of these children to share their visual narratives with Luttrell and her researchers. As an immigrant Latina, I know what it is like to live under the inspecting gaze and trying to live up to it. I know that Luttrell says that there were many opportunities for the students to opt in or out of this research, but at times that desire to belong can drive you to do things that otherwise you would not agree to do. I always wonder how we, as researchers and scholars, can ensure that those who are vulnerable do not feel obligated to participate in such research but do it of their own free will.

I was struck by Luttrell’s discussion of “identity formation” and the in-between worlds immigrant children and youth live in while conforming to a new country and a new language. Immigrants know that feeling of being in limbo, in which you feel out synch with both the new culture and your own culture. In that in-between place there are incredible possibilities for subversive representations. My project is about the subversive act of imagining yourself different from the judgements behind the colonizing and inspecting gazes and interrogating these old narratives (hooks, 1992, Foucault, 1980 in Luttrell, 2010) by bringing them to the surface and holding them to the light.

The article, Children Framing Childhoods and Looking Back, also by Luttrell, emphasizes the importance of visual research with children to interrogate the old narratives, wherein children and their communities are viewed as deficient and in need of fixing by the educational system, in order to bring forth narratives that are antithetical to the old narratives of deficit.

In my project, I want to inspect these imposed narratives and see them for what they are, “internalized racism” (hooks, 1992). I found that Luttrell’s article relates to my life experience as a Latina. Latin Americans have been treated as children by European countries and the U.S., albeit with the help of the local governments. This reminds me of a passage in the book Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee, in which the character Atticus Finch in an argument tells his daughter “the Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people” (2015, 246). The arrogance of this statement brought forth a lot of painful memories. I went to school with Spaniard nuns, the Carmelites. They always treated us as though we did not know better. It was almost as though the Catholic Church saw us as children who did not know how to take care of themselves and so they needed to protect us from ourselves. The castes created by the Europeans, deemed scientific at the time, looked at the mixing of the “races” as diminishing the “pure” races, especially the Caucasian race. Everyone else was treated as inferior and not deserving of the entitlements that the Caucasian race enjoyed. Through these articles, I could see the possibilities of visual research to illuminate that which has been obscured by the denial of the existence of internalized racism in communities of color.

Amanda’s Reflections on 2.26

Reading Luttrell’s pieces this week I was struck by how much information a self portrait or portrait can hold. Particularly when the person is talking back to a cultural narrative about who they are and what their experiences mean. I really enjoyed how she brought in the actual conversations along with the visuals in Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds. It really helped me understand the collective process of inquiry that grounded her research. If anything, there were points where I wished she had brought in more of what she and the students had talked about, and I wondered if she had shared some of her overall reflections with them and whether they had had a chance to give her their interpretation. For example, when she described that the students’ depictions of romance allowed for more of their nuanced and complicated emotions than their idealized depictions of motherhood, I felt she may have been missing something here. In the comments some of the young women made about always being there for their kids, I saw a recognition of the value of that kind of support, perhaps born out of struggle. There are many interpretations, but in many of the places where she related some of the specifics of their classroom experiences to theoretical work I wished there was more of a voice from the students.

Still, much of what she wrote was powerful to me. I decided this week to look back at Nancy Borowick’s photography, the young woman who lost both her parents to cancer. I wanted to see what portraits can say in the context and themes I’m exploring. I found a great picture below she took of her mom. In this photo, I see slowness and humor in the midst of cultural narratives of fear. I see someone being really unique in the midst of cultural narratives that others people who are sick.

As I reflected more this week on my project, I continued thinking about how I might use lines to explore my experience of finding, loosing, finding again connection in loss. I thought about what material would these lines be. Would they be a significant fabric to me, something I chose because of its aesthetics or something that is perhaps just plain white? Would I write something on these lines? I thought of perhaps writing questions I’ve been asking myself throughout our class as I’ve looked at these photographs. I also thought of writing different significant pieces of my life story and my family’s life story and intertwining them. Visually representing the ways in which we take on each other’s stories, how the stories continue and change through the generations, what it means to shift from hearing stories to telling the stories. I thought I could also play with the fabric itself (fraying, weaving it, etc) to express more about the experience of seeking roots and connection in loss.  I wondered if I would want the fabric to loop around something, climb up something, and if it would make an overall design or not.

This week I would like to mostly reflect on Wendy Luttrell’s Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds Chapter 3 reading in my post. Tara represents many of the young ladies that I meet with as a college administrator, pregnant or have had several children for many reasons and are just simply trying to finish their courses to complete their Bachelor’s degree without considering longevity as a career woman, self-worth and value in society. They experience difficulty managing conflicting emotions which are highlighted in the girls’ debate over their self-portraits ( Luttrell). It reminds me of the interactions that I have with students who are interested in returning back to college or throughout their college experience that is struggling with their own identities, family, career choices, and hardships of life as pregnant mothers.

The stories that are submitted to my office at work that I read in my position as a Readmission Coordinator for at-risk students, who suddenly left the college or were academically dismissed, are almost identical to the high school pregnant students in the chapter reading.

I am saddened to read that with all of the resources that are available to students outside of poverty-stricken high schools that students still resort to participate in at-risk behaviors that lead to pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection/diseases.  The student poverty, especially in our inner-city schools, is disheartening. Our school communities need to do more to keep our students more occupied with enriched activities that build self-confidence, self-worth, and a family within the school community to remain encouraged about future self-worth, career readiness, and identity as a mother into adulthood in society.