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In this paper the authors explore the role of contemplative, arts-based practices and pedagogies in a doctoral level qualitative research class to create an understanding of self, self in relation to others, and understanding social structures of oppression as manifested through un/earned privileges. The intent of the class was to activate the authentic inquirer within and to frame a deep awareness of researcher positionality in qualitative inquiry. The authors (instructor and student in the class) discuss how creating a self-portrait and engaging in a duoethnography project cultivated the authentic inquirer. Using differentiated, formative, developmental, and honor-based assessment practices, the authors explore how interrelatedness of being became the key cornerstone of the learning experiences which were extended beyond the classroom.
In this paper, in collaboration with a friend, who is an artist and a licensed counselor, I use a mixed-medium art project to enact Gloria Anzaldúa’s theorizations of nepantlera. I do so by making visible how I operate from the liminal space that Anzaldúa terms nepantla, as a transnational woman of color in US higher education. Using Anzaldúa’s framework of autohistoria-teoría, I integrate fragmented storytelling, art-making, and theorization, exposing the wounds that accompany my movement through personal and professional spaces in academia. Critical to this exploration are a sense of isolation and exile, unsettling understandings of home and belongingness, and the deep excavation of wounds that maintain and proliferate divisions between self and other. Such divisions offer sites of interrogation into our complicity with our oppression through denying power that comes from within, waging war on ourselves, and venerating oppressive externalized power structures.