Transcending gender dichotomy through art teacher education in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is a patriarchal society characterized by gender dichotomy and male domination that permeates through social, educational and domestic spheres resulting in numerous challenges for art teacher education students. Expanding critical consciousness within art teacher education programmes is an imperative step towards developing art teachers who are self-aware and reflexive concerning the intersections of gender, art and education. This study investigated how engagement with visual art can provoke a heightened critical awareness about gender bias, stereotyping and equity among Zimbabwean art teacher education students. Sixteen selected art teacher education students (eight males and females) at the Great Zimbabwe University participated in the study. Participants were guided by researcher-constructed prompts for purposes of image making, interpretation and dialogue. Visual discourse analysis of the students’ visual narratives and discourse analysis of focus group transcriptions revealed several themes as well as evidence of critical reflection and expanded critical awareness related to gender issues. Visual and dialogic methods offer promise for critical engagement and reconciliation of tensions surrounding issues of gender amongst art teacher education candidates.

Walking the story of my Indo-Mauritian indentured ancestry: An arts-based inquiry into voiced resistance and conflict with reconciliation

Reconciliation is a contested term often associated with postcolonial discourses, contending with global histories of injustice, racial discrimination and dispossession that affect diverse groups (slaves, indentures or Indigenous people). Reconciliation stories mainly encounter resistance when problematized by individual experiences. As a woman of Indo-Mauritian indenture descent, I explore my ancestral stories from gendered dimensions: hailed by hardships, discrimination and patriarchal norms from colonialization and its legacies. I discuss my perceived subalternity and disempowerment in defining my positioning and identity. From an arts-based inquiry, I use bricolage to combine art·I/f/act·ology, evocative auto-ethnography and emotional reflexivity in framing emotion-based writing. Intersectionality as a theoretical lens situates the influences of race, culture, ethnicity, caste, gender and identity processes within my narratives. The discussion emphasizes a voiced resistance and conflict with reconciliation. My visual narratives display and are rooted in the listening and co-ownership of ancestral stories as mine, wherein I find voice and agency.

Heroes and villains: multimodal identity construction in children’s wartime visual narratives

The article investigates the Self and Other binaries in wartime visual literature published in Bengali-language children’s periodicals in West Bengal, India during the Bangladesh Liberation Struggle 1971. The study applies a critical multimodal framework using the Social Actors Approach and Social Semiotics within the Discourse-Historical Approach. The binaries are defined by the representation and subsequent differentiation of physical, linguistic, and cultural features of the Bengali and non-Bengali social actors and through their actions in the plots. The representation of social actors in the texts conforms to as well as deviates from typical wartime propaganda.

use of portraiture to foster humanistic care

It has been said that a picture says a thousand words, that art should speak for itself. Within the social sciences, there is recognition that images are not merely illustrations, but “texts” that can be read, studied and interpreted in different ways: they are visual narratives. When we look at a work of art, we respond with our own thoughts, feelings and ideas about what it communicates. When we look at a portrait specifically, we are not just looking at a picture of an individual, we are looking at a picture of someone being looked at. It is a visual record of an interaction, as much as a likeness of the person. The artist-sitter relationship has much in common with the doctor patient relationship involving trust, attention, and an openness to ambiguity and creativity. As clinicians that are tired and feeling overwhelmed, we may objectify patients. Engaging with art can help hone our skills to consistently see the whole person. It provides freedom to sit with ambiguity and maintain curiosity and can help us become more flexible in our thinking, to hold multiple possibilities in mind at the same time. Viewing art in a group provides opportunities to understand and appreciate others’ perspectives. Drawing on multiple portraiture projects related to pediatric epilepsy, youth mental health and dementia, this presentation will provide constructive ways in which portraiture can be used to foster humanistic, patient centred care, and to understand the power of distributed cognition.

Visual Autofiction: A Strategy for Cultural Inclusion

Visual autofiction can be seen as a storytelling method used by contemporary visual artists to initiate cultural inclusion within a field that has historically favored Western narratives and excluded many others. This chapter, which builds on theoretical reflections on autofiction, contends that contemporary artists endeavor to be culturally included in broad, decolonized visual narratives, through the use of innovative visual autofictional methods to represent their experiences. In the case of South African visual artist Bontle Tau, autofiction is used as a strategy to construct a multiform and multifaceted photographic narrative that foregrounds the diversity of selves and stories, further supporting the overall aim of cultural inclusion within representations in the field.

Trailblazer or a One-off?

The paper attempts to analyse the international success of the Danish televisual series Rita (TV2 Denmark - Netflix, 2012-2020). It places the production in a wider cultural and historical context and treats it as an exemplification of, what the author deems, a recent shift in representations of teachers in visual media narratives. The author’s argumentation is premised on three principal assumptions. First, Rita demonstrates that after the genre’s decline at the turn of the twentieth century, the school-centred audio-visual narratives are back in favour. The trend is connected to the growth of the post-network television and the so-called over-the-top services (OTT). Second, the substantial part of Rita’s wide appeal is related to the show’s innovative application of the conventions known from the earlier Scandinavian productions and themes from serials about “difficult women”. This particularly concerns the show’s adept exploration of the resilient and anti-heroic female lead character. Third, Rita is regarded as an early indication of the shift in the ways school life and teachers are represented in the media today. The author stipulates that the show may augur the emergence of many similar complex televisual images of teachers in the near future.

Introduction

We hope you enjoy the three articles and two reviews in this issue. We were inspired by the innovative research approaches, for example, visual narratives (Howard et al.; Kashiwa), in-depth interviews (Kashiwa; Lavolette & Claflin), and learning space analysis using typologies (Lavolette & Claflin). The authors also highlight the important roles of peers in the learning process (Waluyo & Panmei; Howard et al.; Kashiwa).

Coming-Out Narratives in Audiovisual Culture

The rejection of coming out as a linear narrative must be accompanied by an alternative to the formulas of confession, disclosure, and identity adoption that have pervaded the current representations of coming out in the West. The appearance of coming out in film narratives provides important opportunities to observe how elements such as repetition, rehearsal, and, above all, contrasts are incorporated into the stories that are recounted. Conventional coming-out films have relied so heavily on the restrictive nature of the genre’s narrative structure that the potential for alternative, or queered, realities of coming out is erased. The continual reappearance and adaptations of coming out will enable a better understanding of the ways in which the act is presented as a moment that is never finished and that often evades a final, perfected, and polished performance. Four specific narratives from queer film—Beautiful Thing (1996), Summer Storm(2004), Brotherhood (2009), and North Sea Texas (2011)—will be presented to offer counter models for coming out. In Beautiful Thing, the visual narrative demonstrates the importance of the reiterative, adaptable, and unanticipated representation of the act in visual media. In Summer Storm, the audience witnesses how coming out occurs in a world of competitive sports and where the teenage athletes reveal secrets that everyone already knows. In Brotherhood, the act of coming out is transformed into a moment when identities are instantaneously accepted and rejected within a homophobic, neo-Nazi subculture. In North Sea Texas, the script of coming out is reimagined by two characters who ambiguously decline any opportunity to define their identities. Coming out in visual narratives must be understood through an elaboration of Janet Harbord’s belief that the audience gravitates toward particular visual narratives where a comfort zone is created. These films have authored reiterative and adaptable approaches to the act of coming out that both comfort and challenge the audience.

Black book blackboard black book: A drawing-based strategy for knowledge transfer

This paper reflects on a project run in a first-year class of art and design degree, in the Curricular Unit of Art and Design Theory. The objective of the project was to investigate the potential of a teaching protocol where a set of drawings were generated in class by the teacher to facilitate knowledge transfer in the classroom. The drawings generated by the teacher in class have not been treated or explored as a strategy as such, but they supported the delivery of theoretical content in the classroom. As part of the teaching theory protocol, a series of drawings were built as a sequential visual narrative, in the form of a story; these drawings, acting as visual narratives, sought to enable students to understand the theoretical content. At the end of the sessions, all students involved in the project were evaluated through surveys, to gather evidence of their understanding of theory. The results obtained suggest that the use of drawing as a tool in explaining theory facilitates a better understanding of theoretical concepts for students. It also allows the teacher to clarify and adjust unclear points in the lectures, and as such this protocol could function as a recursive strategy. In conclusion, the simplicity of this strategy could benefit students with cognitive difficulties, offering a complementary approach in the dialogue between teacher and student. This approach is particularly useful in contributing to the transfer of knowledge in the classroom in a digital age.

Magical and Mystical Aspects in Nepali Manuscript Illuminations

Nepali Manuscript illuminations are traditional miniature paintings found in religious manuscripts, including Prajnaparamita, Pancaraksa, Shivadharma, Visnudharma, and Devimahatmya. The religious manuscripts narrate mythical events in verbal texts and illustrate mythical characters and their actions simultaneously. The forms, figures and activities of the characters are symbolic, magical and mystical. The paintings present divine and supernatural characters in their spectacular feats of real life. The artworks represent the characters and events of Hindu and Buddhist myths. Despite the presence of magical and mystical elements, the visual narratives teach moral lessons to the real people of the real world. The symbols signify something else beyond the represented visuals. The miniature paintings motivate the readers and viewers for reading and learning by telling interesting stories. Presentation of strange and unusual characters and events renews viewers' perception providing delight while suggesting ethical values of the society. The presentation through magical and mystical characters and actions conveys moral lessons aesthetic manner. This article traces the magical and mystical features of Nepali manuscript illuminations and attempts to throw light on their significances.