Description

This dissertation is about new materialism as it relates to art education. It is a speculative inquiry that seeks to illuminate the interconnectivity of things by considering the ways in which things participate in generative practices of perceiving and making. To do so, the dissertation pioneers an arts-based methodology that allows for broad considerations about who and what can be considered an agent in the process of art making.

In this inquiry, w/e1 work as an artist-participant with other more-than-human and human participants to construct an (im)material auto-historia-teor a, a revisionist interdisciplinary artwork inspired by the work of Gloria E. Anzald a (2009). The art work will explore the creative powers of things in ways that escape more traditional, academic dissertation formats. In this introduction, w/e present the background of the inquiry and state the problem and questions that this inquiry will investigate. Following the introduction, w/e discuss how materiality has been addressed in art education in the recent past and build an argument for decentralizing the role of humans in art education research. In the final section, w/e explain the proposed research design and its grounding in material nos/otras methodology. The material nos/otras narrative is developed in the final three chapters, and the project concludes with further questions and directions for this work in relation to art education.