Kimberly Powell

Making Sense of Place: Mapping as a Multisensory Research Method:

This article argues for the importance of mapping as a multisensory research method in terms of its ability to evoke relationships between place, lived experience, and community. Based on an interdisciplinary summer research course for graduate and undergraduate students that focused on the analysis and design of appropriate development strategies for the El Chorrillo neighborhood in Panama City, Panama, the author describes a research project that combined arts-based research, design and urban planning methods, and ethnography to develop visual fieldwork methods for site-based research, urban planning, and community development in which mapping featured prominently as part of the research. The purpose of this article is to establish an argument for the unique contribution of mapping as a qualitative method, particularly in the ways that contemporary aesthetics of mapping can be used to evoke the lived experience of social, cultural, and political issues related to place.

Art In Science

Abstract This article presents the results of a study of artistry in the practice of research in the social sciences. Traditionally, science and art have been regarded as complementary, one dealing with the expression of feeling, the other with the pursuit of truth. Art, it is widely believed, is largely ornamental in life—nice but not necessary; science is critical to the future. Yet science has a personal side as well as a public one. What is the personal side of science like for those engaged in research in the social sciences? Do artistic considerations function in doing science? If so, where and when? We interviewed social scientists who were fellows at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences to secure insight into the role that artistry might play in the course of their work. This article describes what we learned.This article presents the results of a study of artistry in the practice of research in the social sciences. Traditionally, science and art have been regarded as complementary, one dealing with the expression of feeling, the other with the pursuit of truth. Art, it is widely believed, is largely ornamental in life—nice but not necessary; science is critical to the future. Yet science has a personal side as well as a public one. What is the personal side of science like for those engaged in research in the social sciences? Do artistic considerations function in doing science? If so, where and when? We interviewed social scientists who were fellows at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences to secure insight into the role that artistry might play in the course of their work. This article describes what we learned.

ReMapping the City: Palimpsest, Place, and Identity in Art Education Research

The built environment has a long history of study within the field of art education as the site of material and visual culture that is reflective of, and constructed by, cultural values, traditions, and norms. As our understanding of place is challenged by postmodern theories of culture and identity, art education research and curriculum must consider methodologies that document and account for multiple narratives and viewpoints of place. Drawing on a visual ethnographic study of Panama City, Panama, I examine the figurative concept of the palimpsest as a means to analyze the ways in which built environments embody social, cultural, and historical narratives of place, highlighting the involuted relations between material, visual, cultural, and social experience. I discuss the implications of visual and arts-based methods in terms of the ways in which they might address postcolonial and postmodern concerns with such issues as hybridity, representation, and identity.

Emergent Places in Preservice Art Teaching: Lived Curriculum, Relationality, and Embodied Knowledge

This article explores how student teaching experiences provoke preservice art teachers to rethink curriculum and pedagogy as an organic and living space that is connected to place, community, and local knowledge. Based on a larger qualitative study of urban preservice art education student teachers, the journeys of two student teachers are highlighted as case studies. By investigating information collected through student teacher interviews, classroom observations, and video elicitations, these cases exemplify how student art teachers embark on a journey that facilitates becoming a teacher through emergent and responsive curriculum that integrates art, materiality, and place. We highlight the importance of conceptualizing preservice teaching as an embodied and relational way of knowing, as well as the important role that place, as a focus of curriculum, might have for effective and meaningful field experiences. Implications are discussed in terms of preservice teacher education, urban teaching, and curriculum studies.

Viewing Places: Students as Visual Ethnographers.

or artist statement (depending on the work) that described the context for the issue studied, the research question, methods used, interpretations, and implications for urban planning. Visual tables accompanied some of the images in order to summarize images and/ or provide textual descriptions for the viewer. Triestes project on community music and space was initially an arts-based collage of photos and sketches supported by a table depicting categories not evident in the pictures, such as a description of social access to sound. Trieste later integrated narrative that visually flowed with and became part of the collage, the result of which invites the reader to engage in meaning and interpretation across text and image in an interactive way. Collage Index of the Lived Environment of El Chorrillo. Numbers index the following places in Gillians booklet: 1. The Wooden Houses; 2. Parque Armador; 3. Barraza; 4.Salamones; 5. Inglesia de Fatima. November 2010 / ART EDUCATION 51 5. Iglesia De Fatima Observations • Lccated or Call, 27, AXKA Calal Oclo, Calra Ocho is a nokname that onginates in Moam The people hee saw Calls Oche on Itff-on amd that inpired them oreate their own version SA powerful gang lives on this street SCmnkdaered a black ftr partying not sate, yet cople sal Ig tn the weekendscfor fah and a be, donk•ng * The church reaches Out o the community and those searching for education • The Church is a tandmark in Churnint do to its stieA ltcation and purpose It lt located in the more modar area voth mor, arm for recreation * The celser the water and wooden houses the alder the buildings prove to 0e H yen, concrete Aocks, en accasionally ston e 5r uaed in roarchitactre C ate 26 and 27 contain a large amount of extensions In this ame mrerera room tn use ftr such things and because of the symbol that the asma has beconme p ople decorata ccordingly Walking down c street Friday. Saturday A said to he amaing whie during the week its atller,ring

Special Series on Arts-Based Educational Research

Abstract This article presents the results of a study of artistry in the practice of research in the social sciences. Traditionally, science and art have been regarded as complementary, one dealing with the expression of feeling, the other with the pursuit of truth. Art, it is widely believed, is largely ornamental in life—nice but not necessary; science is critical to the future. Yet science has a personal side as well as a public one. What is the personal side of science like for those engaged in research in the social sciences? Do artistic considerations function in doing science? If so, where and when? We interviewed social scientists who were fellows at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences to secure insight into the role that artistry might play in the course of their work. This article describes what we learned.This article presents the results of a study of artistry in the practice of research in the social sciences. Traditionally, science and art have been regarded as complementary, one dealing with the expression of feeling, the other with the pursuit of truth. Art, it is widely believed, is largely ornamental in life—nice but not necessary; science is critical to the future. Yet science has a personal side as well as a public one. What is the personal side of science like for those engaged in research in the social sciences? Do artistic considerations function in doing science? If so, where and when? We interviewed social scientists who were fellows at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences to secure insight into the role that artistry might play in the course of their work. This article describes what we learned.

Breathing Photography Prosthetic Encounters in Research-Creation

In this article, I write performatively about an artistic practice known as carbon photo printing as a prosthetic space where embodied encounters of images, memory, personal reflection, poetic refrains, materials, creation, and research are brought together in contiguous relation. Drawing primarily from Charles Garoian’s theory of art and research prosthesis and from Brian Massumi’s theories of semblance and research-creation, I describe processes of carbon printmaking from the initial stages of digital negative creation to the final stages of photographic development in an effort to frame research as co-existent and co-emerging within a field of relations rather than as an external practice applied to a context. I conclude the article with a discussion of research as reconceived as a prosthetic encounter by drawing upon the concept of research-creation and its emphasis on expanded perception, experimentation, relationality, and transduction.

Qualitative exploration of intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influence acceptability of semisoft vaginal suppositories

BackgroundVaginal microbicides are a promising means to prevent the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, by empowering women to initiate use prophylactically when they perceive themselves to be at risk. However, in clinical trials, microbicides have shown mixed results, with the consistent finding that effectiveness varies substantially as a function of user adherence.MethodsBased on the assumption that adherence is driven, at least in part, by product properties that influence acceptability, we used softgel technology to develop vaginal drug delivery systems in the intermediate texture space between solids and liquids to overcome potential shortcomings of current dosage forms. Here, we used focus groups and surveys to determine women’s initial reactions (i.e., acceptance and willingness-to-try) for semisoft vaginal suppositories intended for HIV and STI prevention, with a specific focus on how perception of and preferences for vaginal suppositories may be influenced by product characteristics such as size, shape, and firmness.ResultsVia focus groups, we identified intrinsic and extrinsic factors relevant to acceptability of semisoft suppository prototypes. Willingness-to-try depended on factors like intended functionality, anticipated leakage, type of sex, recommended frequency of use, type of sexual partner, and perceived risk. When handled ex vivo, shape, size, and firmness of suppositories communicated information about ease of imagined insertion and handling, perceived effectiveness, anticipated awareness and comfort of the product in the body. These impressions were partly based on prior experience with vaginal products.ConclusionsSensory attributes appear to play a substantial role in women’s preferences and willingness to try the semisoft suppositories. Using these methods during preclinical development should help efficiently optimize a final product that is both biologically efficacious and preferred by women, toward a goal of enhancing adherence and effectiveness.

Mentor’s Introduction for Kevin Slivka

In the act of researching, what does it mean to be in relation with those whom one is intending to research? What are the ethics in relation to field practices regarding Native cultures? How, and though what means, do spaces of communication open? And, important to the field of art education, how does art function as a living practice in relation to culture, ethics, and communication? These are but some of the questions that Kevin Slivka has attempted to ask and pursue in his doctoral research, on which his current essay is based. Building on his Great Lakes field experience in Minnesota with Bruce Martin of the University of Minnesota, he conducted an ethnographically informed study of five Ojibwe artists from the Leech Lake, White Earth, and Mille Lacs Reservations. Kevin examines issues such as cultural identity, ecology, place, materiality and innovation pertaining to Ojibwean artistic practices, a holistic and relational examination of art education. In addition to studying the relational aspects such as the one between art and local ecology, Kevin has also attended to the relational aspects between participant and researcher, what he refers to as critical proximity and Nel Nodding’s (1998) concept of an ethics of care in an effort to remain sensitive to practices pertaining to indigenous research. Indeed, a large part of his dissertation deals directly with notions of reciprocity, communication, and ethics in relation to fieldwork. With his study, Kevin seeks to offer alternative accounts of American Indian ways of life as they are constructed through, and with, artistic cultural practices.