Abby Emerson

Dr. Abby C. Emerson:
I incorporated visual arts into my dissertation because it gave me an opportunity to bring together the theoretical ideas I was thinking about with practitioners who were actually doing these different things in the field and bringing those two pieces together in a way that would build community.
I was exploring anti-racist professional development in New York City schools between 2012 and 2022. It was a curricular analysis of what are schools doing when they have a race PD or an anti-racist PD or whatnot? And since it's happening in so many different locations and in different ways, I wanted to get relatively collective sense of what is the work that we've been doing here? Because that work has been happening in New York, so I wanted to take stock of it.
A lot of the schools when it comes to the curriculum that they are providing for teachers, for their teacher learning around race when there's this professional development, that there were three pretty consistent approaches that were being used.
The first was PD was supporting teachers with learning about structural racism, right, learning of the history, and what's been going on in this country. The second piece was around individual reflection. So supporting teachers to reflect on their implicit biases or their privileges and how that impacts their teaching. And then the third component was their PDs are having some time for teachers to revise their curriculum and make it more multicultural or culturally responsive.
Those were consistently relatively happening in most of the PDs. But the two areas that I found is the weakness related to those, and that's where I feel like we need to continue going because those three things are important work, but there's still more to be done, of course.
The first critique I had was that while the PDs were doing these things and teachers were taking these steps to learn, the relationships between educators or between educators and students in particular, were not really changing in any meaningful way. So there was still a carceral and a punitive mindset that was still very pervasive in the schools, even though they were having all of this anti-racist PD. So student experiences weren't changing as much as we would want.
The second concern I had that I was lifted up by educators and I found through the analysis was that the approaches that were being used to work with teachers and the PD, it actually had nothing to do with institutional or structural change. So everything that was happening was incredibly individual. Teachers revising their individual units. They were reflecting on their individual biases. But there was not much that was happening in terms of let's organize to change our school system and structure. Even though that's a central component of anti-racism, it wasn't actually doing that.
Originally I knew I wanted to explore teacher learning about race in schools and how schools were going about it. So originally my questions were actually looking at whiteness and emotions and the entanglement of whiteness and emotions as related to that teacher learning. And those still stayed throughout... When I actually was collecting data and speaking with the educators, I ended up talking with about 30 educators from about 28 different school communities in New York.
I started in that place, but through my analysis, and I used an arts-based analysis where I was making visual art along the way, and I kept coming back to these ideas that the educators were surfacing that were actually not so much about emotions. So I got directed in a different way and ended up doing a curricular analysis, even though that was not actually my original intention.
For my dissertation, I ended up doing a manuscript that was academy-facing. I had the chapters where I did X, Y, Z. But then I also had an art exhibit, and that was meant to be practitioner-facing, and it was for my participants, because a lot of my participants were incredibly invested in the questions I was asking, and they wanted to know what is going on here in New York? What are the answers per se? Not that I had answers, but I could tell them what was going on. They wanted to know what was happening.
The exhibit was put together to be aimed at them so that they could understand and learn from it without having to read this very long, frankly, somewhat dry dissertation manuscript. So I had the manuscript and an art exhibit, and those were the two parts of my dissertation presentation in the end.
For my art exhibit, I ended up, during my data collection and data analysis making a lot of different visual art. I reached a point where I said, "Oh, I would like to share this art. And I think this art could be a really helpful tool for people to engage with my topic and connect about my topic." This is just a couple of the pieces that I had, but there were maybe 30 or 40 other ones as well.
In the art exhibit, it was a space, so I curated them and I took dissertation excerpts and findings, and I created a space for them to walk through, so participants and educators that were interested in anti-racism in schools could come and view the exhibit and learn about what I found. And then there was also some opportunities at the end of that larger exhibit for them to engage in some collaborative art-making and time for them to connect with each other, and then share resources and tools that supported racial justice in schools here in New York.
I did not intend to do an art exhibit. I have no official art training. I have never made an art exhibit. I have never curated an art exhibit, but I reached a point where it became clear that that was what I needed to do, if there's any other way to say it. So I was making a lot of art during the analysis process. I knew also from my own background that I was someone that needed and preferred to do a project over a paper. So the thought of just spending a year writing a paper was a little bit not my style and not what I was interested in.
So I thought about how I could sort of make a project, I guess, if you will, that would go with it or accompany it, and it unfolded as I went. Each month I was like, "Okay, I think it could look like this." It changed form as I made my way through the writing and analysis. So I ended up doing that exhibit in addition to the manuscript.
The first thing that I think using multimodal scholarship allowed for me to do was that it allowed for me in my particular study to bring together my theoretical framework and how I was thinking about it and approaching it with the methodology. I was using critical whiteness and abolitionist thinking as my central frames to think about my topic. And those frames are really all about disrupting white dominance and building these other ways of being and other ways of doing that are beyond the Eurocentric norm that's so common in schools and research and academia.
So if I was going to use those frameworks, it wouldn't really make sense for me to then just do the regular document, if you will. So I really wanted to push and think, if I'm saying I'm doing a critical whiteness and abolitionist study, then by doing multimodal work and doing community-facing work and doing artwork, that was a way for that to come to life and exist beyond just saying I'm doing those things and thinking those things, but actually it helped me move from the thinking into the doing in a way.
The other piece I think that arts-based work and multimodal work did in my dissertation that couldn't have happened, or it would've been harder to happen otherwise, is it helped me access embodied knowledge and understandings that I think through just writing it would've been harder.
So for me, in making a lot of these things, it was my hands, my body. A lot of these I had to move around the room to create them in a certain way. So by doing those sorts of actions in that movement, I was able to access and think about my topic in a way that was different because by studying anti-racist professional development... I was a fifth-grade teacher for 10 years who experienced that anti-racist professional development in different ways at different schools, so I had embodied knowledge as well about this topic that was able to come through.
Also, as I said, I was originally looking at different questions when I started. But when I was making these pieces and others, I kept focusing on other things that participants were telling me. So by making, it guided me towards, mentally, I was like, "Hey, I know you started with the project over here," but it kept bringing me over into this direction, around themes of interconnectivity and relationships and entanglements, and that really wasn't what I started with, but that's where I ended up going. So that embodied knowledge and embodied experience of doing research became really important to me.
There were a couple of challenges I would say in doing this type of scholarship. The first being that there isn't so much of a blueprint. That's not to say that there is really ever a blueprint in dissertations generally, but I do think when you're writing the dissertation, there tends to be, okay, in chapter one, you answer these questions, in chapter two, you answer these questions. So there is somewhat of a template for you to use that can be really helpful when you're starting and doing this big research for the first time. But to do something like this, where I had an art exhibit, and I was creating art, there wasn't a blueprint or a template for me to hold onto while I was trying to make my way.
So I found that a lot of questions were being lifted up through the process that I didn't anticipate, and then I had to frankly figure them out. That was where my committee was really helpful, where I'd say, "Hey, this is what I'm struggling with and thinking with." They didn't necessarily have an answer either, but they would just ask generative questions and guide me in certain directions.
I think that the challenge was that you're doing something that maybe not a lot of people have done. Because hopefully all of us are doing research that is so unique to us and so specific and from our own place and our own lens that, yeah, hopefully we're doing something that can be different from what other people have done.
When I had my exhibit last March, and there were a number of educators that came through, some of those educators were based here at Teachers College Columbia. Some of the educators were practitioners, so they were teaching fourth grade, they were teaching high school. So people came and they wanted to learn about that. I found that a lot of the educators were telling me that they were leaving with some sort of idea, at least something that they were like, "That is an issue that I'm seeing in my school, and maybe I didn't have words for it, but now the way you've laid it out, I am seeing it too. How can I bring that idea and that seed to go back to my school?"
Also, I know that some, and this was one of my other goals with the exhibit, was I wanted educators to meet each other. People who were interested in this topic I wanted them... Because I was getting the opportunity as the researcher to talk to you and talk to you and talk to you, and I really wanted to make sure that they had spaces for them to talk to each other. I know that some people got to make some connections there and stay in touch. That was, I think, a really cool outcome of the exhibit as well.
I would say that there's benefits to having the approach that I did, which is that I have this written manuscript, which is how academia traditionally has done its research. So people know how to cite the manuscript. People know how to go on ProQuest and find the manuscript. There's workshops about how do you take the manuscript and then split it into articles. So having that frankly is very helpful when it comes to moving forward in academy research type of work.
But I think that there's some definite benefits of the art exhibit as well, because for me, that's the heart work, and it made the process of doing the dissertation so much more meaningful. I could easily see myself kind of losing my way if I had just been writing this manuscript. They say only what, 17 people read dissertations, I feel like I've heard. It's the rumor. So I think I would've been a little frustrated if I was spending that much just on this thing. But by creating an exhibit, it was able to connect me with the purpose and why I was doing this research. So it offered that for me as well.
I think for people that are considering multimodal scholarship and interested in it, I think it could be a benefit show for anyone. As we saw on that panel the other day, I think there's people that enter into doctoral work and doing dissertations that they have a whole wealth of life experiences and skills that could come and help them. So if you have experience drawing comics, if you have experience with curating art exhibits, that I didn't have, but other people have, if you have all these skills, I don't understand why we wouldn't use those on the biggest project of your life perhaps.
It's interesting. I work with elementary school teachers, and we always talk about using students' skills and strengths in the classroom. So I think that it's the exact same thing. We need to use those skills and strengths in dissertation work, which is what you're working on. I think in that sense, if you have a skill like that, then absolutely, if you're interested in using it in your dissertation, go for it.
Also, like I said, for me, I'm not a trained artist. I didn't have a background in visual arts or in curation in any way, but I was someone that really wanted to do something that was connected to community and that had more of a project orientation to it. I think for people that want to do things and try things and see what happens and experiment, I think that this is a great time to do that as well. That's more of the camp that I saw myself in. I was someone that wanted to do a project, and so I found a way to do a project to make the work come to life.
In terms of multimodal scholarships throughout my process, I definitely found a lot of support in the work from Sarah Pink. I found a lot of her ideas really helpful and generative for me. Victoria Wrestler as well. She was actually on my doctoral dissertation committee. By looking at her written work and her artwork, I was able to make sense of where I was going, but also the conversations I had with her were invaluable as I sorted my way through and figured out what I was doing.
I also find myself really compelled by the work, perhaps that's not so much in academia, but in other spaces as well. So the grassroots organization, Project MIA, which is an abolitionist group that works in youth spaces. They're always doing multimodal community-oriented work, whether it's students that are making zines or other types of things as well.
I think that, if we're trying to consider multimodal scholarship in our work, we don't have to only look within academic settings, but there's a lot of people out there that have been doing this work for much longer than perhaps we have been in the context of dissertations.
In terms of citing my work, of course, there's written pieces that I have where there's art and visual works within them, but APA has its whole citation norms around citing artworks that artists and art historians and people in the art world have been using for a long time. So I'm like, "Okay, those work in some way." But also broadly, I think I'm personally less interested in the citation so much and more in the I hope to spark some ideas in other people too.
Whether it's a written work or a visual work or other types of work, I think what's important to keep in mind is while we need to of course take what we can from the piece, whether it's written or visual, we need to take what we can as audience members or readers or viewers, but there also I think needs to be some sort of seed of what was the intent behind the piece. So for me, if this work resonates with people, then of course I hope they can take it and utilize it, but I do hope that there's some sort of connection to where it originally started. For me, it was again about this idea of relationships and entanglement, and there's much more to say about that, but I would hope that that could be a jumping off point for people as well.
Now what I'm working on is taking the understandings that I garnered through the dissertation process. So the understandings about anti-racist professional development in schools, and I'm trying to figure out how to connect what I found and what I came to understand with different audiences. So thinking about how, okay, this conversation I had in my dissertation is really relevant to teacher educators. And this conversation and what I'm thinking about here is relevant to people that work in curriculum. This is really relevant to school leaders as they try to have these anti-racist PDs at school. So I'm trying to find these places for this conversation so that it can sort of disseminate to other people as well.
That's one piece that I'm working on. The other thing that I'm working on right now is extending my research questions around anti-racist and racial justice PD, but I'm exploring it in a new setting because I'm at a new institution now. I'm in a new city. So I'm asking similar questions, but in that space to figure out what's going on there as well. And then perhaps I could bring those things together, in New York, and then now in Providence, in some way in the future.
I guess I would say since I am a self-trained artist at this point, and I'm doing a lot of experimenting and looking on YouTube, learning how to use different materials, I've been playing around a lot with that. Right now I'm playing around with hot glue, more hot glue. I love my hot glue gun. More hot glue, but also using crayons as well. That's what I'm playing with now.
In terms of the pieces that I created during the dissertation process, a lot of them have started to go to different places. Right now I have a small solo show at the CUNY Graduate Center downtown. That is another exhibit that I have going on. Eventually, I'd like to do another exhibit at my new institution as well.
At this point, I'm trying to, the same way you might do a conference presentation, and you go, and you share your ideas here, and you share your ideas there, I think what I'm playing around with and figuring out is how do I take this, which is a visual representation of some of my ideas and find different places for that as well. It's a little bit different, but in some ways I think it's not that different at all.