Archiving the trauma diaspora: Affective artifacts in the higher education arts classroom

Jones, Meadow

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/102934 Copy

Description

Title

Archiving the trauma diaspora: Affective artifacts in the higher education arts classroom

Author(s)

Jones, Meadow

Issue Date

2018-12-06

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

• Lucero, Jorge
• Noble, Safiya

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Lucero, Jorge

Committee Member(s)

• Hogin, Lauretta
• Allen, Nicole

Department of Study

Art & Design

Discipline

Art Education

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• art education
• contemplative pedagogy
• trauma theory
• queer theory
• affect
• feminist theory
• archives
• new media
• arts-based research
• gender studies
• critical pedagogy
• autoethnography

Abstract

This investigation identifies and describes what I uniquely term the “diaspora of trauma” as it emerges in the higher education arts classroom. Through extended case study, and arts based autoethnography, I develop a framework for the analysis and archiving of creative artifacts as part of a diasporic trauma archive, and identify conceptual and practical tools for working in arts education settings in which traumatic narratives may emerge. Drawing upon cultural and clinical models of trauma, feminist pedagogical ethics, queer theory, and cultural archiving theory to advance the notion of a “trauma diaspora” that becomes known through an affective archive. Through close contextualized reading of classroom observations this research contributes to the emerging interdisciplinary discourses around trauma cultures, art education, cultural artifacts and archives. I frame working creatively with a trauma diaspora in terms of a de-centered and non-hierarchical production of public archives comprised of culturally contextualized and politically informed personal narratives. I identify the trauma-sensitive artifact to be a way of making legible the “unspoken” or “unwritten” aspects of cultural trauma, such as those experienced via the body and interpersonal affect. Archive is here defined as a locally and historically dispersed, but cohesive body of work that speaks to and about cultural trauma. This comprehensively informed interdisciplinary synthesis advances novel theoretical and practical approaches to the politics of trauma-sensitive pedagogy and looks specifically at trauma narrativity as public discourse. This work serves as evidence of both affective artifacts and an affective archive, as it is written with narrative and descriptive texts integrated into the larger body of academic analysis of the materials investigated.

Graduation Semester

2018-12

Type of Resource

text

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© 2018 MEADOW JONES

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