About the Body Project

 

In Communication Research, COMM 4533-P01, I taught the students autoethnographic research methods. This method provides a foundation for them to study their own lives, reflect on their identities, circumstances, grief, happiness, and learning processes. A major part of autoethnographic inquiry is reflexivity, or looking at the self twice. The Body Project is a performance-based installation art project that teaches them the process of reflexivity through doing.  Funded by a University sponsored service-learning grant, I supplied students with a body plaster kit and asked them to create an artistic expression of a body part they felt was stigmatized due to difference. Students created their casts, decorated them, and wrote a short summary of why and when they are stigmatized, and how they push against those stigmas in everyday life.

 

Once the students finished their casts and summaries, we put the projects on display in Hilliard Hall. As we discussed the processes of our labor, I quickly learned that this project fostered healing. It was evident that not only did the students reflect on their own bodies, they were able to see how their own actions, words, and intolerance affected others, and more importantly, sought to change those damaging behaviors.

 

Included here is a representative sample of their beautiful yet critical art work that combines media representation, media criticism, embodied art, photography, and text.