Voices on the Inside

• In Event: Visual Thinking Strategies: An Expansive Method for Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

While many epidemics and pandemics have plagued the US over the past five years (and historically), such as COVID19, police brutality, the current administration, mental health, etc. the coverage of news outlets, and social media (as platforms have come to be vital accounts for information) of each of these issues hasn’t always been equitable. We were inundated with COVID, and the play by plays of school shootings and police brutality have taken over the news and social media. However, for a myriad of reasons, the epidemic of mass women’s incarceration has yet to be covered in a way that matches the state of emergency or intensity that it deserves. The mass incarceration of women in America has and risen 700% over the last 10 years (Kajstura & Sawyer, 2024).

The impact of these pandemics on carceral systems, especially women’s facilities, created a deepening in the isolation and invisibility of the women who endured the lockdown. The lockdown, what became a global phenomenon in 2020, is the daily lived reality for incarcerated women. Using VTS as a critical visual analysis, this paper walks through the methodology used to create and analyze a multimodal exhibition to promote awareness and advocacy of incarcerated women across the nation, in hopes of visualizing their voices, and humanizing their experiences.

We draw upon critical theories such as Feminist Carceral Literacies (author, forthcoming) critical multimodal literacy (Cappello et al., 2019) and VTS (Housen & Yenawine, 2000) as a critical visual analysis tool to explore the artifacts created by and with incarcerated women. By positioning VTS as a method, we are able to ask and gain deeper understanding of the multimodal texts that the women have produced. By pairing VTS with FCL we were able to ask and understand what’s going on in this image? – as informed by feminism and carceral realities, in this specific literacy modality, what do we see that makes us say that? – taking into account our shared and/or contrasting realities and positionalities, and what more can we find – both in the framing of the literacy artifact, and with the knowledge that is right outside the margins, both purposely and/or unconsciously.

The multimodal literacy artifacts for this study included self-directed photographic portraits and drawings created by currently incarcerated women. There were over 20 portraits and 5 drawings that were created by women across the nation. After using VTS as our analysis tool we were able to uncover hard truths, advocacy, vulnerability and hope across the portraits and drawings. These deeper understandings help articulate counternarratives of the stereotypes that exist about incarceration and criminality, which may have been missed without the specific yet flexible questioning protocol of VTS. It is through these expanded notions of literacy, community, and research that we offer more space for humanizing research (Paris & Winn, 2013) and worthy witnessing (Winn & Ubiles, 2011).

Author

• Reka C. Barton, University of Maryland