Graduate Research Art Education Conference

Saturday 9-10 ^th of November 2007

The Pennsylvania State University
(Foster Auditorium)

Friday: 7-8:30 p.m.
Followed by a reception at Zoller Gallery

Saturday: 9.00 – 5.00
Followed by a party at
Karen Keifer-Boyd's home

 

Poster

Program Brochure

Christine Ballengee Morris
Friday Keynote
Videostreamed Lecture at
EMITTO

2007 DVD Set of Presentations

The Creation of Screen Memories:
A Remembering Video Artist’s Autoethnography

Tamar Efrat
Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University

This dissertation asks the question, how do intergenerational and cultural memories get constructed? The approach taken is to analyze the filmic memories created by “remembering artists” through the creation of autoethnographic videos that explore the researcher’s ‘screen memories’ dating from childhood. “Remembering artists” are defined as those filmmakers who, having been shaped by the long-term consequences of historical and social events, now represent them as individual and intergenerational narratives that seek to expand and reconstruct otherwise lost experience. Using video-making forms such as performance, conversation, first-person narration, and family photographs, as well as fabricated home movies, autoethnographic videos are created that explore and critique the construction of cultural memory.

Short-Circuiting Myths and Fairy Tales (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Interrogate Abjection through Visual/Culture)

Kim Schwartzhoff
Doctoral Candidate in Art Education and Women’s Studies Dual Degree at The Pennsylvania State University, and Assistant Professor in Art Education at SUNY-New Paltz

Can the subject, rendered abject by what is proscribed by laws of Church and State, move from the disembodied to embodied voice by embracing so-called abjection? I examine abjection and authority/subject models from Hannah Arendt’s theory of power, in which she argues that power always relies on violence, and that exposing the processes of violence can neutralize power over constructions of abject identities. The purpose of the study is to explore pedagogical implications of abject identity viewed metaphorically through fairy tales and memory of fairy tales to both resist and embrace abjection.

Traversing through Moving Images: Cinematic Installations and Non-linear Narrative as a Reordering of Time
in Everyday Experiences

Hua-Chu Yen
Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University

This phenomenological study explores the role of time in artist’s creation. In order to describe time-filled moments of being that fuse the present with the past and evoke remembering, the research is not limited to visual art, but also includes literature, sound, film, and architecture as ways of inquiry. Works that incorporate non-linear narratives are particularly selected in order to demonstrate the extent to which the juxtaposition of different temporalities can become a catalyst that contributes to the comprehension of self and an awareness of one’s surroundings.

Critical Inquiry into the Changing Role of Cultural Identity in Digital Art Practice and the Implications for Higher Education

Borim Song
Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University

This study examines cultural identity as a creative and critical construct in digital art practice and draws implications for computer-based instruction in higher education. In order to teach digital art beyond the mastery of technical skills, instructors need to adapt critical cultural perspectives in the use of computers in art. In exploring how cultural identity functions within the context of teaching practice, contemporary art practice, and institutional practice in today’s digital world, this presentation reports on a case study of an academic and artworld event that comprised a professional development conference, arts exhibitions, and related inquiries.

Art Education for Older Adults: An Ethnographic Study
of Art in the University of the Third Age

Kathy Lynn James
Doctoral Candidate in Art Education at The Pennsylvania State University

The University of the Third Age (U3A) is a British learning organization where older adult members teach each other by sharing the talents and expertise that they have acquired throughout their lives. This presentation will summarize the preliminary findings of five months of fieldwork with seven U3A art, craft, and art history groups. Discussions will include the relevance of the U3A to art education, the potential for the U3A to provide new roles for retired art educators, new ways to conceptualize older adult art education, and the questioning of modernist underpinnings in the literature.

Curtain, Popcorn, and Film Education:
A Case Study of Public Screenings in the Dryden Theatre
at the George Eastman House

Chi-Ying Yu
Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University; M.S. in art education ’07 at The Pennsylvania State University

Is a theater a pedagogic/learning space? What are the purposes of the theater-based experience? I conducted a qualitative case study of the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman House and found that staff members construct the theater to be both an exhibition space and a pedagogical space, in which a discipline-based philosophy is employed. Audience members share similar ideas with staff regarding the nature of film and film exhibition. A perfect mutually reinforcing circle is formed. Although this circle now sustains the life of the theater, the lack of negotiation signals future challenges for the institution.

Christine Ballengee Morris

Ballengee Morris’s research examines social justice, social reconstructivism, and postcolonialism as they relate to arts policy, curricula development, integrated curriculum, pedagogy, and identity development. She co-wrote a book, Interdisciplinary Approaches to Art Education in High School, which was published by the National Art Education Association. Dr. Ballengee Morris’s teaching experiences include fourteen years in the public school system, artist-in-residencies in the public schools, and international teaching in Chile, Brazil, Australia, and Ireland. She is trained to lead social justice workshops and mediation. She is the recipient of the 2007 Ziegfeld Award and the 2006 J. Eugene Grigsby, Jr. Award for her commitment to diversity; Ohio State University—Newark Research and Service Awards; NAACP Licking County, Ohio, Native American Women Leadership Award (2002); and Traditional Master of Flatfoot Dancing, Augusta Heritage, West Virginia.

 

Jennifer Eisenhauer

Jennifer Eisenhauer (’03 Ph.D. Art Ed. at Penn State, Dissertation—What Is a Girl? Producing Subjects in Feminist and Visual Culture Pedagogies) is assistant professor of art education at The Ohio State University. Her research concerns visual culture and subjectivity; postmodern and poststructuralist approaches to history; disability studies; gender and girls studies; and independent media.

Jack Richardson

Jack Richardson (’02 Ph.D. Art Ed. at Penn State, Dissertation—New Babylon: Rethinking Spatial Metaphors within the Practice of Art Education) is assistant professor of art education at The Ohio State University’s Newark campus. His research concerns theories of space in visual culture and art education, philosophy in art education, contemporary art, and art-based teaching as inquiry.

 

Robert Sweeny

Robert Sweeny (’04 Ph.D. Art Ed. at Penn State, Dissertation—’Net_Work_Ed: Simulated Bodies and Objects Intertwined in Cyperplaces and Art Educational Spaces—Threads of a Critical Digital Pedagogy) is assistant professor and coordinator of Art Education at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He has published widely on the topics of digital visual culture, new media aesthetics, and the relationship between surveillance technologies and works of art, and has presented his research at both national and international conferences.