Dream-mapping for Soft/er Schools

This project is my doctoral study and is currently underway.

Project Description:

K-12 schools remain hostile spaces for many 2S/LGBTQIA+ people in Canada (e.g. Peter, Campbell & Taylor, 2021). Queer and trans people (particularly those who are BIPOC and/or disabled) are habitually framed as a problem, in need of inclusion strategies (e.g. Gilbert, Fields, Mamo & Nesko, 2014; Sadowski, 2016). What if instead of framing queer and trans people as a problem in schools, queerness and transness was understood as a type of cultural capital (Yosso, 2005) for educational futurities? What if 2S/LGBTQIA+ people, specifically femmes (who are often overlooked within queer studies and educational studies, Schwartz, 2020), were asked to dream about how K-12 schools could be soft (a femme intelligence, Schwartz, 2020)?  Softness is considered a femme intelligence that is racialized, classed, and connected to madness and disability: a way of knowing/being that seeks to re-value vulnerability, emotionality, relationality, and earnestness (Schwartz, 2020). Femme theories unearth the ways that intersectional femme perspectives have been marginalized and re-centre those perspectives. Within this study, femme and femme-of-centre refers to 2S/LGBTQIA+ people who recuperate and embody femininity in their politics and/or aesthetics.

Using softness (Schwartz, 2020) as a framework, this qualitative study conducted at The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (The University of Toronto), investigates: What happens when a group of eight interracial dis/abled femme/femme-of- centre older youth and educators dream-map about how schools could be soft(er)? This project examines: (i) how these co-dreamers (participants) are conceptualizing softness; (ii) how they are imagining soft/er models for education through an arts-based participatory process called dreaming-mapping; and (iii) what affective (Davidson, Bondi, & Smith, 2016) and speculative geographies (Williams & Keating, 2022) are created through creating and analyzing speculative art.

Dream-mapping is an arts-based (Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2018) and participatory-informed methodology (Fine & Torre, 2019; Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon, 2014), rooted in queer utopias (Muñoz, 2009; Jones, 2013), queer and trans of colour worldmaking (Gutierrez-Perez & Andrade, 2018), femme futures (Schwartz, 2020) and crip intelligence (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018). The art-making process asks co-dreamers to creatively speculate about how schools could be structured differently by using historically devalued (“effeminate”) artistic mediums (such as zine-making, cross-stitch, drag, confessional poetry, crafting, collaging etc.). Co-dreamers are then invited to collaboratively analyze their own art and that of other participants using an adapted descriptive review process (Himley, 2002). The descriptive review process involves co-dreamers coming together, sharing their art with the group one by one, each co-dreamer offering observations, and the group identifying themes. The study draws on four key data sources: (1) transcripts from intro and exit interviews with co-dreamers, (2) transcripts from community-inquiry meetings, (3) field notes, and (4) the art created by co-dreamers throughout the process. Overall, there will be two data analysis approaches: (1) thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022, n.d.) of the transcripts and fieldnotes; and (2) an adapted descriptive review process (Himley, 2001) done by the participants. 

References:

  • Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (n.d.). Thematic analysis. Just another University of Auckland Blogs. Retrieved from: https://www.thematicanalysis.net 
  • Cahnmann-Taylor, M. & Siegesmund, R. (2018). Arts-based research in education foundations for practice. Routledge. 
  • Davidson, J., Bondi, L. & Smith, M. (2016). Emotional geographies. Routledge.Fine, M. & Torre, M.E. (2019). Critical participatory action research: A feminist project for validity and solidarity. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 43(4), 433-444.
  • Gilbert, J. Fields, J. Mamo, L. & Nesko, N. (2014). Tending toward friendship: LGBTQ sexualities in US schools. Sexualities, 22(3), 418-435. DOI: 10.1177/1363460717731931
  • Gutierrez-Perez, R. & Andrade, L. (2018). Queer of color worldmaking: <marriage> in therhetorical archive and the embodied repertoire. Text and Performance Quarterly 38(1-2), 1-18.
  • Himley, M. (2002/2011). The child, the art of teaching, and the classroom and the school (2nd Edition). The Prospect Archives and Center for Education and Research. 
  • Jones, A. (2013). Utopia: A critical inquiry into queer utopias. Palgrave Macillan.
  • Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R. & Nixon, R. (2014). The action research planner: Doing critical participatory action research. Springer.
  • Muñoz, J.E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then & there of queer futurity. NYU Press.
  • Peter, T. Campbell, C. & Taylor, C. (2021). Still in every class in every school: Final report on the second climate survey on homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in Canadian schools. Egale Canada Human Rights Trust.
  • Piepnza-Samarasinha, L.L. (2018). Care work: Dreaming disability justice. Arensal Pulp Press.
  • Schwartz, A. (2020). Soft femme theory: Femme internet aesthetics and the politics of “softness”. Social Media and Society, 1-10. 
  • Williams, N. & Keating, T. (2022). Speculative geographies: Ethics, technologies, aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Yosso, T.J (2005). Whose community has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education 8(1), 69-91.