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Archiving the Trauma Diaspora: Affective Artifacts in the Higher Education Arts Classroom

Author: Meadow Jones (University of Michigan)

  • Archiving the Trauma Diaspora: Affective Artifacts in the Higher Education Arts Classroom

    Article

    Archiving the Trauma Diaspora: Affective Artifacts in the Higher Education Arts Classroom

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Abstract

This study offers a close, contextualized reading of classroom observations that contributes to the emerging interdisciplinary discourses around trauma cultures, art education, cultural artifacts and archives. Using a single case from my larger dissertation research, I identify and describe an example of the diaspora of trauma as it emerges in the higher education narrative arts classroom. In the larger research project, I used extended case study methods to investigate conceptual and practical tools for working in arts education settings in which traumatic narratives may emerge and developed a framework for the analysis and archiving of creative artifacts as part of a diasporic trauma archive. Working creatively with trauma diaspora is framed in terms of a de-centered and non-hierarchical production of public archives of culturally contextualized and politically informed personal narratives. The trauma-sensitive artifact is understood as a way of making legible the “unspoken” or “unwritten” aspects of cultural trauma, such as those experienced via the body and interpersonal affect. Archive is considered a locally and historically dispersed, but cohesive body of work that speaks to and about cultural trauma.

Keywords: trauma, diaspora, archive, artifact, pedagogy, affect, feminist

How to Cite:

Jones, M., (2019) “Archiving the Trauma Diaspora: Affective Artifacts in the Higher Education Arts Classroom”, Marilyn Zurmuehlen Working Papers in Art Education 2019(1), 1-14. doi: https://doi.org/10.17077/2326-7070.1516

Rights: Copyright © 2019 Meadow Jones

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Published on
01 Dec 2019
Peer Reviewed