Body Knowledge and Curriculum: Pedagogies of Touch in Youth and Visual Culture

by Stephanie Springgay

Body Knowledge and Curriculum examines student understandings of body knowledge in the context of creating and interrogating visual art and culture. It illustrates a six-month research study conducted in an alternative secondary school in a large urban city. During the research project, students created a number of visual art works using a diversity of material explorations as a means to think through the body as a process of exchange and as a bodied encounter. The book engages with feminist theories of touch and inter-embodiment, questioning the materiality and lived experiences of the body in knowledge production, in order to provoke different ways of theorizing self/other relations in teaching and learning. This volume is important because it explores the ways in which youth understand the complex, textured, and often contradictory discourses of body knowledge, and seeks to intentionally create alternative pedagogical and curricular practices to ones that subscribe to a healthy body model. Additionally, enacting educational research as living inquiry, this book is an exemplar of the arts-based methodology, a/r/tography. Body Knowledge and Curriculum is a valuable text for courses in curriculum theory, art education, qualitative research methodologies, visual culture and pedagogies, and feminist theory. Appropriate for advanced undergraduate students, pre-service teacher education students, and graduate students, the book provides an interdisciplinary investigation into body research.

144 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2008

Reviews

[Peaches · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though I am possibly the least interested in body knowledge and the arts than any other form of ABR, I appreciated a lot about this text and recognize how groundbreaking it is for the fields of curriculum studies and ABR. Springgay has a way of making complex ideas, theories, and practices accessible, while still delving deeply into them. For instance, she provides a thorough definition or a/r/tography, then explains six features of it. Though I've read multiple texts about a/r/tography, the six features were never outlined clearly as Springgay did in this one.
Springgay's study provides this budding researcher hope. I desire to do a curricular study with a/r/tography for my own dissertation, so seeing how she executed hers effectively was helpful. She even developed her dissertation further into this book, which would be a dream come true for any doc. student. I enjoyed reading excerpts from her students' comments. I also appreciated how she responded to feedback in her dissertation, relaying that someone on her committee told her that her writing was liked "dropped threads," but she actually saw that as an apropos style for what she was doing (p. 6). You've got to appreciate a writer who believes in staying true to her style (within reason). I also respected how she is an artist herself.
In order to influence curriculum, work needs to be done in actual schools instead of theorizing about it, and that is what Springgay does. She spent time fostering relationships between herself and participants, which is important as qualitative research moves forward. In an effort to be too structured and distanced from subjects, one could miss out on so much! This is the first time I've read about a researcher promoting artistic inquiry with her students while she does it herself, which is what I am interested in too!
Side note: This is also the first time I read that a/r/tography is considered post structuralist. It makes sense, but I had not considered before.
My one issue was how Irwin introduces her mentee with basically no punctuation in her section at all. Did anyone proofread?!

[Jennifer]

This book felt repetitive at times. Other times, I did some skipping because parts felt unnecessarily lengthy. However, I did get quite a lot from this for myself and my teaching. Will definitely be able to use in my dissertation.