Sacred Criticality, Trance, Markmaking, and Performativity: Spirit Nurturing, Awakening, and Aesthetic Practices in Educational Research

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Abstract
Combining aesthetic inquiry practices juxtaposed against neoliberalism-driven public education, four scholars work with connective aesthetics and spirituality to identify critical issues in educational research, carving their own paths as spirit-based inquirers, spiritual activists, dreamers of possibilities, and de/colonizing researchers who cultivate witness consciousness. Spirituality has been a marginalized concept in academia, as if human beings are spirit-void. Yet, even without recognizing the role of spirit, one’s spirit is always already engaged in all aspects of knowing, being, and living in the world. Thus we explore how as educators, educational practitioners, and researchers we integrate spirituality, activism, criticality, restoration, and healing through creativity, performativity, ritualized practices, and dream-states of being, knowing, and doing our work.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Spirituality & Education

Chair

• Alex Red Corn, Kansas State University

Papers

• Fallen Tree Time: Restorative Art and Trance-Based Inquiry - Barbara A. Bickel, Southern Illinois University - Carbondale

• Contemplation, Criticality, and Creativity: Cultivating Spirit Nurturing Practices in Educational Research - Kakali Bhattacharya, Kansas State University

• Playing as Survival: Research-Creation as Spiritual Awakening - Anne Harris, RMIT University; Stacy Holman Jones, Monash University

• Markmaking as Mantra: Cultivating Necessary Wisdom Through Aesthetic Inquiry - Brooke Anne Hofsess, Appalachian State University

Discussant

• Celeste Snowber, Simon Fraser University