ARTiculating currere: Arts-based methods and methodology to facilitate and understand biographic situations

Abstract

This article explores how an instructor of undergraduate writing courses within a public university used arts-based writing assignments to facilitate the currere process. Throughout the semester, students were asked to complete artistic representations of writing prompts to pair with their assignments. Students completed narrative, analytic, and research-based writing assignments with artistic components. The art-making invited students to include biographical elements of their identities into their compositions, which enabled them to engage with the currere process. Additionally, the instructor’s own knowledge of currere made it possible for her to understand her students’ depth of educational experiences within her curriculum. Through practitioner action research that closely followed voluntary student participants over a semester, this article explores connections between art-making and currere as well as ways the process of currere can function as a curricular method within the undergraduate writing classroom.

Keywords

References

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