You Too Can Be a Rebel

Abstract

The blurred lines between the domains of art, education and art education create tensions that impact how art educators negotiate their identities (Baxter, Ortega López, Serig & Sullivan, 2008) within themselves and through a myriad of complex relationships with society and the natural world. I reflect upon the profound transformations of my theoretical and methodological framework of pedagogy emerging from my academic, artistic and professional experiences, particularly my exposure to twentieth century philosophy, post-modernism, critical pedagogy, democratic education, feminist theory and queer studies, each through the lens of social justice. I draw from the ideas of thinkers—Goodman, Lorde, Deleuze, Freire and Zolla, amongst many—who, in one way or another, embraced an integrative dialectic of difference rather than fearing or rejecting conflict, opposites and contradictions. In the twenty-first century, this exploration of the interspace has resulted in arts-based theoretical and methodological approaches to inquiry (Rolling, 2013) such as studio art as research practice (Sullivan, 2004), a/r/tography (Springgay, Irwin & Kind, 2005), and productive ambiguity (Shipe, 2015). This thesis is an arts-based autoethnography, intended to embody the dual nature of the identities and practices of artists/teachers through the creation of an artistic product. Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner pointed to the three axes of autoethnography: the self (auto), culture (ethno) and the research process (graphy); modes of autoethnography fall along different places within these continua (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). While I place the strongest focus on my experience and culture, I also stress the relevance and rigor of the research process. Drawing inspiration from the amazing work of Nick Sousanis and Rachel Branham, I include extensive notes and references at the end of the thesis. The prologue is formatted as an illustrated novel—a blueprint for a full graphic novel version of this thesis. The rest of the manuscript is a literary autoethnography, by which I assume the identity of an autobiographical writer foremost.