Poetic Juxtaposition to Render Nuanced Depictions of Participants

• In Event: Advancing the Methodological Possibilities of Arts-Based Educational Research

Abstract

Methodologies such as autoethnography, parent child ethnography, portraiture, case study, and others require tender and nuanced renderings of participants. This is especially important when exploring sensitive topics. In this paper, I elucidate a methodology I term poetic juxtaposition, which I used to describe participants in a parent-child autoethnography examining what my children learned about race in the context of an attempted anti-racist home curriculum. Poetic juxtaposition is a method of connecting theory, data, and everyday texts through poetic form. I share two poetic juxtapositions, how I developed them, and how this methodology might be taken up by others.

Author

• Rhianna K. Thomas, New Mexico State University