Performing Monsters: Embodied Discourses in Children's Classroom Drawing

• In Event: Studying Children's Expressions and Knowledge(s)

Abstract

This paper analyzes children’s drawing via Butler’s (2004) performativity—the repeated, sustained, and embodied performance of dominant social discourses. In an eight month case study on children’s drawing in a kindergarten language arts curriculum, the author collected and micro-analyzed video data that highlights drawing as a performative vehicle for local classroom discourses such as good listener, good writer, good friend as well as for discourses of popular culture such as hero and monster. The author concludes that performative events in the classroom allow children to engage with curriculum in creative and productive ways.
Keywords: children, classroom, drawing, embodied, performativity

Author

• Leslie Kendall Rech, University of Georgia - Athens