1st Edition

Art, EcoJustice, and Education Intersecting Theories and Practices

Edited By Raisa Foster, Jussi Mäkelä, Rebecca Martusewicz Copyright 2019
    198 Pages
    by Routledge

    198 Pages
    by Routledge

    Emphasizing the importance of contemporary art forms in EcoJustice Education, this book examines the interconnections between social justice and ecological well-being, and the role of art to enact change in destructive systems. Artists, educators, and scholars in diverse disciplines from around the world explore the power of art to disrupt ways of thinking that are taken for granted and dominate modern discourses, including approaches to education. The EcoJustice framework presented in this book identifies three strands—cultural ecological analysis, revitalizing the commons, and enacting imagination—that help students to recognize the value in diverse ways of knowing and being, reflect on their own assumptions, and develop their critical analytic powers in relation to important problems. This distinctive collection offers educators a mix of practical resources and inspiration to expand their pedagogical practices. A Companion Website includes interactive artworks, supplemental resources, and guiding questions for students and instructors.

    1. Introduction: Contemporary Art as Critical, Revitalizing, and Imaginative Practice Toward Sustainable Communities
    Raisa Foster and Rebecca Martusewicz

    2. For the Most Important Parts of You: A Story About Science
    Hala Alhomoud

    3. Recognizing Mutuality: The More-Than-Human World and Me
    Raisa Foster

    4. The Experience of the Uncanny as a Challenge for Teaching Ecological Awareness
    Antti Saari

    5. Letters from Love’s Great Room: Fiction as Cultural Ecological Analysis and Pedagogy of Responsibility
    Erin Stanley

    6. Art Is That Which Takes Something Real and Makes It More Real Than It Was Before
    Tommy Akulukjuk and Derek Rasmussen

    7. Poetry and EcoJustice in a Kenyan Refugee Settlement
    Veronica Gaylie

    8. The Uncle Vanya Project: Performance, Landscape, Time
    Bagryana Popov

    9. For the Love of the Forest: Walking, Mapping, Making Textile Art
    Kathleen Vaughan

    10. Finding My Wound, Bandaging My Knife: Stimulating Inner Transformation through Art
    Jussi Mäkelä

    11. Building Ecological Ontologies: EcoJustice Education Becoming with(in) Art-science Activisms
    Alicia Flynn and Aviva Reed

    12. Apptivism, Farming, and EcoJustice Art Education
    Anniina Suominen

    13. Creativity as Intrinsic Ecological Consciousness
    Srisrividhiya Kalyanasundaram (Srivi Kalyan)

    14. Love in the Commons: Eros, Eco-Ethical Education, and a Poetics of Place
    Rebecca Martusewicz

    Biography

    Raisa Foster is an independent artist and scholar, and was the Research Director of the Art-Eco Project from 2015 to 2017 in Tampere, Finland.

    Jussi Mäkelä is an artist and PhD candidate at the University of Tampere, Finland, and was a Researcher for the Art-Eco Project from 2015 to 2017 in Tampere, Finland.

    Rebecca A. Martusewicz is Professor of Social Foundations in the Department of Teacher Education at Eastern Michigan University, USA.

    "This book is an exciting international exploration of how EcoJustice Education can, and must, intersect with Art and Art Education in order to address the devastating ecological crises in which we find ourselves. This collection gives educators much-needed resources to begin to understand how we can use art to creatively intervene in the harmful assumptions and practices that are impacting humans and the more-than-human world."

    Alison Happel-Parkins, University of Memphis, USA

    "This book offers strong ecocritical perspectives that reframe dominant assumptions in Western industrial culture. This timely anthology pushes EcoJustice scholars and educators to think—and feel—beyond the human-centered confines of the modernist assumptions constituting ‘what is’ and the possibilities of ‘what ought to be’ in regards to the role of art, and artistry, in re-imagining education."

    John Lupinacci, Washington State University, USA