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Incredibly harmful hegemonic norms are being disseminated through postfeminist media and female adolescents are being targeted and shaped by them in alarming ways. Given this current cultural climate, it is timely and critical to identify how new literacies, popular media, and institutional sexism are impacting young women’s lives, their understanding of the world, and of themselves. In this arts-based study the author investigated teen girls’ photographs and accompanying stories to determine which nexuses exist between the participants, their photographs, and their life experiences in order to discover in what ways their photography revealed elements of their identities. Critical feminist theory and visual narrative inquiry informed this SSHRC funded research in which photo elicitation was conducted with 8 teen girls over a period of 6 months. Findings revealed that within the main nexuses of appearance, media, and identity the themes of fetishization, post-feminism influences, and control were complexly interwoven. By exploring the girls’ photographs and investigating the stories and interpretations associated with them, it was possible to develop insight into how youth were using visual media to document and understand their life experiences and create their identities. Ongoing conversation with the participants about their images provided an opportunity for them to consider how their photographic images represented (or misrepresented) their identities. This feminist research allowed for experimentation, reflection, and generative knowledge to occur for the participants. It invites the reader into the blurred boundary between public space, cultural norms and societal expectations, and the private worlds, personal ideas and identities in which adolescent girls live as they mature into young adults. / Graduate / 0727 / 0273

In this thesis I explore writers and their writing practices as embodied, contingent, and affected by aesthetic environments and contemplative practices. I discuss contemplative practices as techniques for recognizing the co-dependent origination of the self/world, and as tools for disrupting the trifurcation of body, mind and word. I explore the written word’s role in the continuous production of new meaning, and as part of the continuous production of new “selves” for writers, and readers. I use narrative auto-ethnography to situate myself as a researcher, sensory ethnography and interviews to profile four practicing writers, and arts-informed Research-creation to document my own writing and contemplative practices. I also consider whether a post-pedagogy view of educational research might produce/allow space for more creative approaches to educational theorizing.

In this dissertation I engage in life writing and literary métissage (Chambers, Hasebe-Ludt, Leggo, & Sinner, 2012; Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, & Leggo, 2009) to explore and exemplify mindful, aesthetic, and compassionate practices for working through moments of crisis (Kumashiro, 2010) in teaching and learning. The dissertation is designed as a four-strand braid and organized around the active verb “practising” to dig deep into the dynamic, and often difficult, processes of teaching and learning: (1) Practising Vulnerability; (2) Practising Discomfort; (3) Practising Mindfulness; and (4) Practising Compassion. Each strand is composed of different genres of life writing: theoretical and analytical introductions, letter writing, journal pieces, comics, photos, poetry, creative non-fiction, collages, scenes from a play, and an alphabet book. The multimodal life writing pieces are worked examples (Gee, 2010) of contemplative practices and pedagogical praxis. Life writing offers concrete ways to practise mindfulness, reflection, and reflexivity, which, in turn, invite a more awakened, critical, and compassionate stance as an educator. If teachers want to move beyond simply promoting the importance of reflective practice, wellbeing, self-actualization, and compassion to their students then we need to show more teachers (and teacher educators) the messy process of doing so themselves. Reading life writing is a starting point for teachers at all stages in their careers to imagine how they could, or already do, engage in similar processes and invite them to cultivate compassion and self-compassion as a grounding stance for their life projects as teachers, learners, and human beings. My autoethnographic teacher inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) was prompted when I encountered “troubling” (Kumashiro, 2009) tensions when first teaching about homophobia and transphobia to teacher education students at a faculty of education on the Canadian prairies. I began to explore the vulnerability and discomfort of this teaching moment from an experimental (Davies, 2011), multimodal (Kress & Street, 2006; Pahl & Roswell, 2006), critical literacy stance (Janks, 2010; Vasquez, Tate, & Harste, 2013). My inquiry shifted after a diagnosis of breast cancer, which became an opportunity for me to awaken to more mindful, empathetic, and compassionate ways of being, living, teaching, and researching. / February 2017

ABSTRACT The use of the arts as a tool for conflict transformation, or what has been called arts based peacebuilding, is a new and emerging field. Yet, there is sparse empirical evidence on its outcomes. The Nile Project, a musical collaborative from East Africa that brings together musicians from all of the countries that border the Nile River, is aimed at finding a solution to the dire water conflict and crisis in the region. This study aims to explore how their collaborative process of creating and performing music despite their linguistic, cultural, musical, and political differences, can illuminate how music can be used to address conflict. Using a combination of collaborative qualitative and arts-informed research methodologies, original members of the collective as well as the co-founder were interviewed. Observations were also done of the musicians' rehearsals, performances, and classroom visits at a New England University and during a musical residency in Aswan, Egypt. Findings suggest that an outcome of the Nile Project's work is the development of relationships, deeper learning, particularly about other Africans, and that the process of making music with those from diverse musical traditions can act as a way to practice peacebuilding skills: creating unity, while honoring diversity. This study seeks to add to a limited amount of research documenting the arts in peacebuilding suggesting that music might be an effective tool for transforming conflict.

This thesis explores the effects of art-making in group art therapy sessions for people affected by Parkinson's Disease. It examines their experience of self through active engagement with art materials. It also draws on the experience of family caregivers and of professionals providing other therapeutic support for these patients. The research methodology is based on feminist, post-structuralist epistemological thought, situating the research as a political, reality-altering endeavour shaped by, and interpreted through, the researcher's particular ideological lens. The thesis emphasises the importance of developing a critical overview of the research context and considering how dominant discourses have shaped both the individual patient's experience of Parkinson's and the service approach to ways of improving their quality of life. A medical model is viewed as determining a narrow understanding and experience of the condition. Broadening the focus of the work to attend to how Parkinson's is culturally and socially embedded provides new understandings of its effects on patients and their wider needs. The research design has a strong participatory component drawing on the support of a consultancy group of six people affected by Parkinson's and three family caregivers, all seen as experts through their personal experience of the condition. The researcher defines her position as researcher-near using her background as artist, art therapist and her experience of working with people affected by Parkinson's at the research site. The research design is inspired by group art therapy practice, and takes research as praxis for theory building. Social science qualitative interviewing was used with four focus groups, and in ten semi-structured individual interviews which involved participant selected examples of their group therapy artwork. Nine audio-recordings of group art therapy sessions were collected. The researcher used art-making throughout the research process to create visual researcher diaries, and 'response' art as a way of exploring the material gathered for analysis. Besides providing an opportunity to consider the role of visual expression to complement verbal, this English language thesis uses data collected in Spanish and Catalan. Translation across languages (spoken, written and visual) and cultures became a method through which to consider interpretation, explore nuances and question assumptions. The dilemmas faced in translation enhanced researcher reflexivity and facilitated exploration of the space between art and language. This thesis offers an understanding of the potential contribution of group art therapy within six themes: 'Self-construction and discovery'; 'Material action'; 'Aesthetic group movement'; 'New perspectives'; 'Artwork as legacy'; and 'Physical transformation of issues'. These themes support the view that group art therapy acted as a catalyst for well-being and better functioning for participants, and that it can be modelled as a continuous process of embodied enquiry for those affected by Parkinson's. The triangular therapeutic relationship is explored and the terms 'creator' - 'artwork' - 'audience' are proposed to recognise the flexibility in the art-maker's position between creator and audience of their artwork. That artwork is conceptualised as an active meaning generator in the group art therapeutic encounter and the artistic intersubjective matrix is explored in relation to therapeutic factors specific to group art therapy. Implications for working with other related chronic, life changing conditions are elaborated.

Worldwide, the collection, separation, and sales of recyclable materials is a survival strategy for many unemployed and impoverished families, especially in urban landscapes. They are called recyclers, and their work is often associated with social exclusion objectively manifested through discrimination by the public, which negatively impacts recyclers’ perceptions of their own self–worth. Discrimination places the recyclers within a marginalized social space and perpetuates poverty and social inequity. Such discrimination is best evidenced by the lack of open dialogue between recyclers and the public. The present research was designed to open spaces for these dialogues to occur, with the ultimate goal of decreasing discrimination suffered by the recyclers from the greater metropolitan region of São Paulo, Brazil. Working collaboratively with recyclers that are affiliated with the Brazilian National Recycling Social Movement (MNCR), and using arts–based research interwoven with theories of social movement, environmental adult education and transformation, I explore the learning that goes along when we use visual arts to bridge the gab between the recyclers and public. During seven months (March–September, 2012), 50 recyclers participated in three different arts–based workshops (abstract painting, impressionism painting, and mosaic) and seven art exhibits in different cities in Brazil. These art workshops and exhibits were video and audio recorded and represent the primary data source in this research project. Discourse analysis combined with a cognitive developmental approach to understand peoples’ free conversation was used as an analytical tool to explore the recorded materials. The artworks produced in this research illustrate recyclers’ stories of poverty, social exclusion, and their victories toward a better future for themselves. The process of creating and exhibiting their paintings mediated the construction of their visual thought, and in this way, they were able to (re)imagine a different reality for themselves. This empowered recyclers because it added value to their work as environmental agents, increasing their sense of self–worth. Additionally, through the art-making process, it was possible to identify moments of realization in one’s life (i.e., epiphanies). By mapping out epiphanies throughout the lifespan of an individual, we can explore their moments of transformation, which is critical in environmental adult education processes. Finally, my findings suggest that community art exhibits are dialogical spaces, where knowledge is co–constructed and mobilized. These exhibits are also alternative sources for income generation for the recyclers and are in fact, environmental adult education practices. / Graduate

Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction / Thomas Vontz / This phenomenological study hermeneutically explores law professors’ felt experiences within online existential lifeworld spheres. Prose, poetry, color images, and virtual journeying provide descriptive and interpretive text suggesting expansion of Gadamer’s fusion of horizonal understanding. Law professors who teach asynchronously online selected five color images from pixabay.com corresponding with the five universal existential themes: body, space, time, relationships and material things/technology (van Manen, 2014) as catalysts to conversationally explore what it feels like to transition from classroom to online instruction. Multiple phenomenological, artistic, and scientific theories prismatically amplify and explain the study’s design: Gadamer’s hermeneutical circle of understanding (1960/2006), Termes six-point spherical perspective (2016), Einstein’s closed yet unbounded universe (Egdall, 2014), and Seamon’s concept of “at homeness” (2012). Dialogical understanding of Self and Other(s) through Gadamer’s call for festival and serious play (1960/2006) is activated: The reader is invited to interact with the study text through visual and auditory web experiences. Researcher’s hermeneutic and existential retelling of the professors’ conversations begins to unfold metaphorically around a table within a virtual forest. When researcher’s previously bracketed-away prejudice for incorporating synchronous modalities into online learning erupts, professors’ longing felt for classroom home actualizes and ultimately emerges as a sixth existential dimension proposed by the researcher. A culminating journey through virtual desert in search of online home continues the retelling and metaphorically incorporates all six existential themes. Dramatic changes in researcher’s lifeworld view, ways of knowing and being, self view, self action and pedagogical development as a result of conducting the study are summarized. Future research is implicated including exploration of professors’ existentially felt experiences while teaching synchronously online and deep-mining professorial empathy toward students. Factors that impinge on all law professors’ transitioning to online instruction contextually anchor the study: 1) Legal pedagogy’s evolution from 18th Century professional skills training through the late 19th Century intrusion of legal doctrine instruction, and 20th Century paralegal skills training; 2) The American Bar Association’s 21st century mandates for graduating students with both legal skills and legal doctrine training; 3) 21st Century pedagogical Immutables (teaching online, teaching legal job skills, teaching legal doctrine, teaching to standardized tests); and 4) 21st Century Protean Challenges (institution and student demand for technology-based instruction, the Global Legal Services Industry’s hierarchical control over legal education and practice, enrollment and tuition crises, multi-cultural limitations, and the pedagogical conundrum of choosing among multiple online design and delivery modalities).

There have been calls within landscape (and broader environmental) policy for the greater incorporation of cultural values and stakeholder participation. This, however, has often been critiqued within the academic literature as being difficult to achieve in practice. Concurrently, academic research around ‘landscape’ has seen an emergence of exploring more embodied, experiential and ‘more-than-visual’ ways of knowing, challenging the more traditional concept of ‘landscape’ as a ‘way of seeing’ and a cultural product. This research explored the multiple ways that people value landscapes using walking interviews, arts-based methods and key-informant interviews (with local and national landscape managers). It explored the potential of visual and ‘more-than-visual’ methods to both engage and articulate with more subjective, emotional and embodied encounters with landscapes. This was then used to explore the potential and challenges of adopting cultural and more participative approaches to landscape management. After an initial analysis of the data gathered through the methods, this was then used as part of feedback events within the two case study areas to allow the participants of the research and the broader local community to engage with the work. This research argues that ‘landscape’ as a concept, when approached from a ‘more-than-visual’ perspective, highlighted that the inherently visual concept is bound up within a much broader sensory immersion within the landscape. The research demonstrated the complex and interconnected relationship between people and the landscape through the concept of ‘dwelling’ emphasising the lived-in, everyday encounters with landscape. This relationship is tied up within past individual experiences, shared social and cultural history as well as the material landscape itself arguing for a more ‘hybrid’ understanding of people and landscape. Furthermore, the research highlighted both the potential and challenges of participative approaches with multiple landscape stakeholders and challenges the ‘homogenous’ perspective of ‘community’ within management rhetoric. There is an argument for more partnership working between multiple stakeholders to generate trust and dialogue. It argues for the creation of spaces within which the more politically sensitive issues in relation to landscape management can be discussed and the potential for solutions to be created.

Cob, as an arts-based research process, creates movements and moments of survival. Survival is an ideological construction and an actual, local practice. Survival is also about desiring and fulfilling arts-based desires to work with the land through academic and material scavenging. Cob creates strategies for surviving, for working with our respective environments wisely. Cob building teaches people how to negotiate the natural economy and their relationships to labor and each other through an artistic and intimate practice. From a feminist poststructural lens, survival happens on the local level, between and with people. Cob building creates knowledge through creative, kinesthetic, and collaborative engagement. As a feminist poststructuralist, arts-based research allows me to examine local action and interaction among people, positionalities, and competing differences. Rather than appeasing the modern impulse to objectify and rationalize an end-point or an object- oriented view of the production of art, feminist poststructural theory works to problematize the end-point. Through cob building, a rich, arts-based process, I call into question the modern impulse to find Truth and ask that we be aware of developing new oppressions when working toward equity and justice. Cob building teaches people how to engage together within the form of artistic creation. Cob is an arts-based research process that includes the land as an integral part of its canvas. In order to articulate, uncover, and engage the claim that, as an arts-based process, cob creates movements and moments of survival, I use the arts-based process, a/r/tography. This a/r/tographical text does not offer an end point but works to recreate moments and movements of cob building as an arts-based research project. A/r/tography helps to layer the movements of arts-based survival within cob building and this text. Throughout this work, the arts-based process of cob building is the overlying metaphor for the construction of the structure of this text. As the chapters move forward, the structure builds up.