Hsin Fang

1.17 Unexpected Becoming of Immigrant Mother-Educator: Reterritorializing Motherhood through Collaborative Art (Paper)

Hsin Fang, Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

Abstract:

My dissertation explores an unexpected territory in art education, examining how collaborations among materials, mother-child relationships, and online communities introduce a new pedagogical turn. By transforming alongside the “becoming” of immigrant mother-educators in the U.S., I not only investigate how these educators navigate the interconnections between art materials, gender roles, migration, and cultural heritage, but also engage in my own reflective, relational process as a researcher. Grounded in Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of affect and art, I explore motherhood as a creative force, landing on a posthuman approach to care. This work includes an embodied investigation into how identity, belonging, and care practices are reshaped at the intersections of teaching, mothering, and migration. For immigrant mother-educators, unexpected territories arise in navigating unfamiliar cultural landscapes, where traditional notions of mothering, self-worth, and gendered cultural politics are constantly renegotiated. Through a collective art forum, I examine “collaborative art” not only as a mode of visual expression but as a dynamic site for identity and relationality. My research reveals how immigrant mother-educators, intertwined with materiality and unique practices of caring, recreate cultural, social, and personal meanings – thus forming a reterritorialized art pedagogy. As a form of resilience amid shifting social grounds, the collaborative art process becomes both a mental and material territory, enabling mother-educators to reflect on and redefine values disrupted by globalization and modernity. In exploring these dynamics, this evolving collaboration serves as a “shifting ground,” challenging hegemonic narratives and reterritorializing immigrant motherhood with alternative perspectives. Attuned to how immigrant mother-educators embody affective, care-driven artmaking, this research challenges boundaries between the personal and professional, aiming to foster broader discussions on art education’s role in cultivating empathy and inclusivity amid global displacement and cultural transformation—especially in this era marked by neo-nationalism.

9.5 Crafting-with Radical Democratic Futures: Collective Practices in Craft and Art Education (Panel)

Panellists:

Hsin Fang, Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

Merium Qureshi – Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

Amber Ward – Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

Abstract:

This panel introduces our research that explores craft pedagogies through radical democracy (Freire, 2014; Giroux, 1996; hooks, 1994), when collaborating with each other and residential classes featured in summer programs from a folk school in the United States. In addition to tracing the richness of the folk school’s pedagogical emphasis on craft, we (three researchers) creatively and collectively craft-with our natural and political surroundings as unexpected territories. Working from a communal way of knowing-in-making and embodying co-creation and empowerment, we aim to resist social hierarchies within and outside of our collaboration and advance equity and difference. A research methodology we are calling ‘crafting-with’ is used to foreground underrepresented craft materials, histories, and praxis toward a radical democratic togetherness. This methodology views crafting-with not only as a practice of making but also as an embodied way of knowing, where educators, learners, and materials are in dynamic conversation. Inspired by folk school philosophy, we use a series of craft retreats to creatively document archival data on folk school craft, beginning in the 1950s, and intertwine it with our natural surroundings, cultural experiences, political concerns, and pedagogical optimism as a way to reterritorialize and re-envision the place of craft in art education. An additional unexpected territory materializing from this research is one of horizontal mentorship whereby we – a faculty member, doctoral candidate, and undergraduate student – work to mentor each other all while acknowledging the various power differentials that accompany our given identities and while navigating the discomfort of a new collaboration with fluid, unpredictable responsibilities and goals. In sum, this research interweaves data, pedagogy, culture, gender, and political engagement to animate art education toward a more collaborative and democratic future through craft.