Tent

• In Event: 31.085 - Trains, Tents, and Board Games: Collaborative Teacher Research Into Historical Trauma Through Arts-Based Inquiry

Abstract

Several student researchers came together to construct a tent, a large-scale arts installation which was constructed of hand-sewn fabric panels on which they painted images from Maus (Fig. 2). In their group discussions, student and teacher research partners chose to focus on scenes of empathy, compassion, and community in Spiegelman’s (1986) story – traits they saw as central to survival within the horrors of the Holocaust. The tent structure was designed in such a way that it required everyone’s participation in order for it to stand, as a material enactment of the mutual care portrayed in the panels they had selected and painted. This and other products of students’ research were used to communicate understandings of historical trauma and social justice to others. For example, the students involved in creating the tent were given the opportunity to share their project with visiting educators from Saudi Arabia, many of whom were unfamiliar with Maus as well as some of the details of Holocaust history (Fig. 2).

Author

• Ben Gallagher, University of Toronto