Open Collections

Baldus, Angela Inez

University of British Columbia

This dissertation considers pedagogical presence through material and conceptual variations on correspondence. Presented as artistic research the work aims to address the question what happens in art and correspondence that enables pedagogical presence? Permissions are taken (Lucero, 2023) from scholars and artists working in the arts-based methodologies of a/r/tography (Irwin, 2013) and research-creation (Loveless, 2019) and the autobiographical, educational, practices required to do currere (Pinar, 1974) and feminist reflexivity (Wilkinson, 1988). Together their influence permits the use of correspondence as an experimental and conceptual art practice, and a way of doing research in education. The work acknowledges variations on lived experiences, and the descriptions of experiences (Ellison, 1955), that make correspondence art and a pedagogical object to study. The first chapter the author responds to the work of different artists, poets, writers, and activists who have influenced their understanding of pedagogy. The second chapter features letters between the author and eight participants who joined the author in a correspondence art exchange. The third chapter pushes conceptual and abstract ways of thinking about correspondence and shows how the concept of correspondence travels as it is oriented towards different lines of thought (Bal, 2002). Preluding chapter three the author claims that art is indefinite. Sharing this belief before expanding the notion of correspondence suggests that what comes before and after this part of the dissertation is aware of and interested in its artistic engagements and qualities. The last chapter presents conversations held with participants during a Twitch livestream as evidence of how correspondence might be sustained through different materials. The paper concludes with final thoughts about where this work can go, how, and why it should continue. Pedagogical presence emerges through many variations on correspondence. The dissertation acknowledges the tension between individual experience and collective thinking that happens across different kinds of distance – created through time and difference. The author suggests that correspondences can help enable pedagogical presence which in many ways encourages reflection on our experiences alone and in community. These practices might be considered a kind of study rooted in a desire to live more ethically responsive and curious.

Text

2024-03-28

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/87650

Curriculum Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/