Literacies of the Body: The Testimonios of Body Art in New York City ELA (English Language Arts) Secondary and University Classrooms to Create Spaces of Trust and Healing

• In Event: Literacies of Refusal: Writing, Healing, and Creating Outside the White Gaze

Abstract

Objectives or purposes:

The purpose of this presentation is to amplify the literacies of the body (tattoos and piercings) between a Latina ELA teacher and her students in a NYC secondary high school and early undergraduate university classroom to create healing and trusting spaces.

Conceptual framework:

This study braids the frameworks of post-colonial third space theory, as explored by Bhaba (1994), Soja (2008), Latina/Chicana Feminists Anzaldúa (1987) and Prieto & Villenas (2012), and Sealey-Ruiz’s (2022) Archeology of the Self to explore the validity of body modifications as a valid form of literacy between teachers and their secondary high school/early college students to create spaces of healing and trust through sharing stories of resistance/counterstories.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry:

In response to Latina feminist Celia Alverez’s question, “... after all this time, why are our stories still invisible…?” (Latina Feminist Group, 2001, p. 6), I collect the plàticas and testimonios of resistance that are told through body art. Through the sharing of these literacies of our bodies, narratives of resistance are collected and trusting and healing relationships between me, a Latina English teacher, and her students are forged. This collection of counternarratives, “...help mark a consciousness of resistance to the oppression of language, culture, and race, and a recognition of the in-between spaces formed by those with complex identities” (Latina Feminist Group, 2001).

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials:

This research draws on my autoethnographic study as a Latina HS English teacher in a New York City public school and a private NYC university. As an educator who has embraced body art as a form of expression, and who shares the testimonios and the lived experiences symbolized by this body art, I collect stories shared between me and my students who use the literacies of their bodies to convey their lived histories, counterstories, and narratives of resistance.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view

Over my 24 years of teaching, I shifted my position from actively trying to stifle student voice to encouraging and empowering students to express and share their lived experiences and authentic selves through reflection, re-membering (Dillard, 2008; 2011), and writing. I have come to understand that our stories– our plàticas y testimonios–document valid experiences that are worthy to be shared and included as a powerful research methodology that is developed through classroom discourse. It is in my ongoing research using plàticas y testimonios where the building of trusting and healing spaces with the students we teach are created and nourished.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work

The purpose of this study is to legitimize body art as forms of expressions and as valid literacies that tell stories of love, trust, healing, and resistance in the secondary ELA/undergraduate writing classrooms in a private NYC university.

Author

• Christine A. Feliciano-Barrett, Teachers College, Columbia University