Papers by Marissa Willcox
Why Science and Art Creativities Matter, 2019
This chapter examines how STEAM education may transform education in the STEM subjects towards ed... more This chapter examines how STEAM education may transform education in the STEM subjects towards education for a sustainable future. Particularly, it examines the potential of combining science and a ...
Religion, Hypermobility and Digital Media in Global Asia
Materiality communicates complex information, often about the perspectives of people whose voices... more Materiality communicates complex information, often about the perspectives of people whose voices are silenced, or left off historical records. Material cultures provide indirect archives of such social histories, values and feelings. Examining the expressive qualities of material culture, we draw on data from the trans-national research project ‘Interfaith Childhoods’. This project generates and documents community perspectives on faith, identity and belonging. In response to our data generated through arts workshops with children and focus group discussions with parents, we develop a theoretical framework which observes how the materiality of religion can shape the ways young people and their parents build relationships with those from different religions. Here, we theorise how our empirical evidence makes a case for thinking through visual and material cultures of religion.
Arts-Based Methods for Research with Children, 2021
Initially figured as 'outside' the normal confines of fine art institutions, children's art has s... more Initially figured as 'outside' the normal confines of fine art institutions, children's art has since been examined as a source of pure creativity and expression, free from the constraints of adult society. This chapter offers ways of analysing children's art that are attuned to the creative and complex ways child art is produced. Our analysis moves beyond developmental frameworks of childhood to argue that interpretations of children's art can provide insights into complex and emotionally charged experiences of children. Through analysing children's art created in the first year of the Interfaith Childhoods workshops, we argue that children construct detailed descriptions of the ways in which they see themselves and their environments, peers and community, making it possible to reconsider the agency we give to material expressions of the self made by children.
Religion, Hypermobility and Digital Media in Global Asia, 2020
Materiality communicates complex information, often about the perspectives of people whose voices... more Materiality communicates complex information, often about the perspectives of people whose voices are silenced, or left offf, historical records by colonised culture. Material cultures provide indirect archives of such social histories, values and feelings. Examining the expressive qualities of material culture, we draw on data from the trans-national research project 'Interfaith Childhoods'. This project generates and documents community perspectives on faith, identity and belonging. In response to our data generated through arts workshops with children and focus group discussions with parents, we develop a theoretical framework which observes how the materiality of religion can shape the ways young people and their parents build relationships with those from diffferent religions. Here, we theorise how our empirical evidence makes a case for thinking through visual and material cultures of religion.
Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research, 2020
Feminist new materialisms account for the agency of the body and the ways it is entangled with, i... more Feminist new materialisms account for the agency of the body and the ways it is entangled with, in and through its environment. Similarly, affect scholars have putwords to the bodily feelings and attunements that we can’t describe. In this paper, we provide a brief survey of feminist thought that established the scholarly landscape and appetite for the turn to affect and offer this as a theoretical tool for thinking through the child body. Feminist affect is used here as a resource for understanding embodied change in children who are living with intergenerational trauma. Through analysing data from the Interfaith Childhoods project, we explore art as a way to affectively rework trauma in three case studies with refugee children from our Australian fieldwork sites. Our new materialist arts based approaches map embodied changes in children that speak to how bodies inherit and are affected by things that often can’tbe described. Specifically, in relation to their religious, cultural a...
Arts-Based Methods for Research with Children, 2021
Digital community making through a live entanglement of the self and social media, offers up new ... more Digital community making through a live entanglement of the self and social media, offers up new pathways for thinking through human and nonhuman divides. Queer activism and feminist art on Instagram has made way for a reframing of what constitutes a ‘digital community’ (boyd 2011, Baym 2015, Oakley 2018). This paper thinks through the materiality of this feminist activist art community through the method of ‘Instagram live interviewing’. Drawing from a larger project that aims to understand the ways activist art practice on Instagram subverts heterosexual norms and patriarchal representation, we argue that the ‘live’ nature (Back, 2012) of the Instagram live interview (Hickey-Moody and Willcox, 2019) mobilizes a new type of queer materiality. By applying Karen Barad’s (2007) feminist new materialist theory of ‘intra-action’ to Rosi Braidotti's thinking about posthuman experience as intra-acting with aspects of the world that she classifys as non-human (2013), we reconceptualize...
Studies in Childhood and Youth, 2021
This well-established series embraces global and multidisciplinary scholarship on childhood and y... more This well-established series embraces global and multidisciplinary scholarship on childhood and youth as social, historical, cultural and material phenomena. With the rapid expansion of childhood and youth studies in recent decades, the series encourages diverse and emerging theoretical and methodological approaches. We welcome proposals which explore the diversities and complexities of children's and young people's lives and which address gaps in the current literature relating to childhoods and youth in space, place and time. We are particularly keen to encourage writing that advances theory or that engages with contemporary global challenges. Studies in Childhood and Youth will be of interest to students and scholars in a range of areas, including Childhood Studies,
The COVID-19 Crisis, 2021
Social Sciences, 2019
Using a feminist, new materialist frame to activate ethico-political research exploring religion ... more Using a feminist, new materialist frame to activate ethico-political research exploring religion and gender at a community level both on Instagram and in arts workshops, we show how sharing ethnic backgrounds, religious beliefs, gender identities and sexualities through art practice entangles a diffraction of differences as ‘togetherness’. Such entanglement creates cross-cultural interfaith understandings and gender diverse acceptance and inclusion online. We use diffraction, intra-action and entanglement as a way of framing our understanding of this ‘togetherness’ and show that human feelings rely on more-than-human assemblages; they rely on homelands, countries, wars, places of worship, orientations, attractions, aesthetics, art and objects of attachment. The feelings of ‘community’ and ‘belonging’ that we discuss are therefore direct products of human and non-human interactions, which we explore through arts-based research. In this article, we apply Karen Barad’s feminist new mat...
Reimagining Education: The International Science and Evidence based Education Assessment
In this section we discuss the nature of learning, which is inherently social, relational and aff... more In this section we discuss the nature of learning, which is inherently social, relational and affective. We introduce the concept and definitions of social and emotional learning (SEL) and synthesize knowledge around how social and emotional experiences interact with the learning processes.
Matter Journal of New Materialist Reseach , 2020
Feminist new materialisms account for the agency of the body and the ways it is entangled with, i... more Feminist new materialisms account for the agency of the body and the ways it is entangled with, in and through its environment. Similarly, affect scholars have put words to the bodily feelings and attunements that we can't describe. In this paper, we provide a brief survey of feminist thought that established the scholarly landscape and appetite for the turn to affect and offer this as a theoretical tool for thinking through the child body. Feminist affect is used here as a resource for understanding embodied change in children who are living with intergenerational trauma. Through analysing data from the Interfaith Childhoods project, we explore art as a way to affectively rework trauma in three case studies with refugee children from our Australian fieldwork sites. Our new materialist arts based approaches map embodied changes in children that speak to how bodies inherit and are affected by things that often can't be described. Specifically, in relation to their religious, cultural and refugee histories (Van der Kolk 2014, Menakem 2017), we offer the analysis in this paper as a route towards understanding children's bodily experience and expression, in ways that have been made possible by affective lines of inquiry pioneered by feminist scholarship.
Entanglements of Difference as Community Togetherness: Faith, Art and Feminism, 2019
Using a feminist, new materialist frame to activate ethico-political research exploring religion ... more Using a feminist, new materialist frame to activate ethico-political research exploring religion and gender at a community level both on Instagram and in arts workshops, we show how sharing ethnic backgrounds, religious beliefs, gender identities and sexualities through art practice entangles a diffraction of differences as 'togetherness'. Such entanglement creates cross-cultural interfaith understandings and gender diverse acceptance and inclusion online. We use diffraction, intra-action and entanglement as a way of framing our understanding of this 'togetherness' and show that human feelings rely on more-than-human assemblages; they rely on homelands, countries, wars, places of worship, orientations, attractions, aesthetics, art and objects of attachment. The feelings of 'community' and 'belonging' that we discuss are therefore direct products of human and non-human interactions, which we explore through arts-based research. In this article, we apply Karen Barad's feminist new materialist theories of 'diffraction', 'intra-action' and 'entanglement' to ways of thinking about human experience as intra-acting with aspects of the world that we classify as non-human. We use these new materialist frames to reconceptualize the human feelings of 'community', 'belonging' and 'what really matters' in feminist and intra-religious collaborative art practices and Instagram-based art communities. To better understand and encourage communities of difference, we argue that the feelings of 'community' and 'belonging', which are central to human subjectivity and experience, are produced by more-than-human assemblages and are central to identity. The methodologies we present are community focused, intra-active, arts-based research strategies for interrogating and understanding expressions of 'community' and 'belonging'. We identify how creative methods are a significant and useful way of knowing about communities and argue that they are important because they are grounded in being with communities, showing that the specificity of their materiality needs to be considered. We are all humans, but some of us are just more mortal than others. (Braidotti 2013, p. 3) Diffraction as a way of thinking draws attention to the agency of the non-human, the ways that the materials used to make art can change thinking and can change relationships between people … building more than human relationships. Arts based practices offer an ideal way not only of accessing but also of reorganizing emotional investments. (Hickey-Moody 2018, p. 8)
Book Chapters by Marissa Willcox
Why Science and Art Creativities Matter (Re-)Configuring STEAM for Future-Making Education, 2019
This chapter takes up the feminist new materialist concepts of “diffraction” and “intra-action” a... more This chapter takes up the feminist new materialist concepts of “diffraction” and “intra-action” as ways of thinking about children’s embodied and imaginative knowledge through, and in relation to, aspects of the world that can be classified as the non-human. It employs these new materialist frames of “diffraction” and “intra-action” to show how art/science intra-act through “quiet activism” in children’s art. It argues that this work can be considered a vernacular form of STEAM education that radically re-situates, and indeed deconstructs, forms of science education proposed through outcomes-based curriculum, and extends children’s sense of themselves as entangled in their environment. The data theorised in this chapter is drawn from findings from a multi-sited ethnographic project that runs in 13 sites in 6 cities. This ongoing empirical project utilises art as a research method in primary school classrooms and informal educational settings, ostensibly to explore issues of social value and community belonging. However, across the last three years working in the UK and Australia, children, unprompted, have returned repeatedly to concerns about the environment, climate change and pollution. The children are so enmeshed in their broader environment that some draw self-portraits of themselves as landscapes. The arts-making practices reported here have led children to create speculative and imaginative scientific inventions that were designed to respond to the now inevitable effects of climate change and that merge art and science in unexpected ways. In developing the concept of quiet activism as an inherently interdisciplinary art/science (STEAM) method of environmental and art education, this chapter argues for an intra-active and diffractive, interdisciplinary and speculative model of embodied pedagogy. Children’s creative, quiet activism teaches us interdisciplinarity in dynamic and applied ways.
Religion, Hypermobility and Digital Media in Global Asia: Faith, Flows and Fellowship, 2020
Materiality communicates complex information, often about the perspectives of people whose voices... more Materiality communicates complex information, often about the perspectives of people whose voices are silenced, or left offf, historical records by colonised culture. Material cultures provide indirect archives of such social histories, values and feelings. Examining the expressive qualities of material culture, we draw on data from the trans-national research project 'Interfaith Childhoods'. This project generates and documents community perspectives on faith, identity and belonging. In response to our data generated through arts workshops with children and focus group discussions with parents, we develop a theoretical framework which observes how the materiality of religion can shape the ways young people and their parents build relationships with those from diffferent religions. Here, we theorise how our empirical evidence makes a case for thinking through visual and material cultures of religion.
The COVID-19 Crisis: Social Perspectives, 2021
In the isolating times of COVID-19, digital live streaming has been a key means through which art... more In the isolating times of COVID-19, digital live streaming has been a key means through which artists connect with their audiences/community and audience members access live art and music. With performances mediated through digital live stream, artists and audience members alike are experimenting with strategies for connection, and indeed, for survival. This reconfiguration of sociality, of the liveness of community, threatens to endure beyond the pandemic. The Instagram Live music festival ‘Isol-AID’, which we examine as a case study in this chapter, prompts a discussion around arts accessibility as a measure of public health and wellbeing. Building on literature about social prescribing, we suggest that Instagram Live engages therapeutic forms of arts practice, and as such, could be offered as a new digital health resource. Using a critical posthumanist perspective, we think-through Instagram Live and streamed performance as posthuman assemblages to highlight the importance of non-human actants (such as phones, wifi, colours, sounds) in the production of the feeling of community, which is a social determinant of health. These creative methods of expression and connection encourage discussion around the importance of the arts in community health and wellbeing, a conversation that could not be more relevant than in the socially isolated world that is, this global pandemic.
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Papers by Marissa Willcox
Book Chapters by Marissa Willcox