Can feminist pedagogy be enacted
in a web-based arts learning environment? And, if so, how?
My work on CFH
began with research on what feminist define as feminist pedagogy for
the creation of spaces as an aesthetic-expressive forum to disrupt patriarchal
inscriptions and structures. Judy Chicago’s facilitation of Womanhouse
(1971) marks the first art education institutional project that has
engaged in feminist pedagogy. Internationally renowned artist, Chicago
facilitated the creation of another house, the At-Home project,
in Kentucky in 2002. In 2002, I interviewed the At-Home
participants concerning the nature of the collaboration and their understanding
of feminist pedagogy experienced in the At-Home project, and
interviewed Judy Chicago on November 23, 2002, and others involved with
Womanhouse. From this research and my own teaching practices
I am developing feminist cyberpedagogy.
In f all 2003, I created a multimedia Web site from research on Judy Chicago’s teaching methodology to provide a model for art educators on a Participatory Art Pedagogy Informed by Feminist Principles. The Web site at http://www.judychicago.com/pedagogy/ also premiered at three exhibition sites in Pomona and Claremont galleries in California on January 9 and 10, 2004, and was a part of the two-month Envisioning the Future exhibition. I have used this multimedia site on pedagogy to facilitate collaborative artworks in her courses.
Specific teaching approaches built into the CFH program are:
• Norms questioned
• Self-representation questioned
• Difference valued
• Local needs valued
• Accountability stressed
• Perpetual
displacement strategies employed
Recently, a graduate student wrote
to me that "no young working woman today wants to label herself
as a 'feminist' even though she might fit the bill." If interested
in discussing this issue please comment on the CFH
discussion board. Such a discussion might consider who has created
negative connotations of the word feminism, and for what purposes (i.e.,
a question of how knowledge and identities are constructed)? What are
the connotations? How true are those connotations to what you believe
feminist means? What identity would you be constructing by calling yourself
a feminist? What are the consequences of defining oneself as a feminist?