Digital Commons Network^™

The Mask As Metaphor: Deweyan Reflections In The Time Of A Pandemic, Todd Lekan

Dewey Studies

No abstract provided.

Drawing As Continuance: What Insists On Being Heard, Darlene St. Georges

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article extends She-Hero through an inquiry into drawing as a creation-centred practice of continuance. Five drawings are engaged as aesthetic encounters through which relational and perceptual shifts become perceptible, allowing inner authority to emerge as a cultivated capacity to remain responsive to what is unfolding. Drawing is approached as a site of metramorphic reconfiguration where imagination, memory, and embodied sensing participate in the decolonizing of perceptual habits and the restoration of relational ways of knowing.

Showing It! Art Matters. But Why? How?, Holly Edwards

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article addresses the agency of art with reference to an exhibition entitled “The Nature of Spirit”.  That show appeared in the local public library, resonating strongly with notions of “heartwork”.  My first Artizein publication was written in response to 9/11, and this one maintains comparable urgency, seeking solace in art precisely when the world seems to be sliding into lunacy. The prose explores the powers of art in traumatizing times with words, while the images offer the reader insight and support energetically.

Text/Ures, Kathy Mantas

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

By entwining the voices of other co-creators, text and images, I share a brief site-specific photo-reverie of my life-long allure to trees—in this instance, by attending to the trees near my home. This offering is rooted in peripatetic aesthetic practices that embrace a slower creative approach and more spellbinding ways of living, learning and knowing. In essence, this is an invitation to have an artful encounter with text/ures of trees.

Attending The Way Of The Crane: Centring Our Lives Through Creative-Centred Work, Alexandra Fidyk

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

A dreamscape using pastiche is used for reflecting upon the value of creative-centred practice and research. Attending to the image through reflection and circumambulation offers entry to a centring practice. In holding both, a new image emerged. The dreamscape—an unexpected scene of cranes in joyous dance—unfolds as actual dream and offers a metaphor for understanding an arc within the dreamer’s life. In this condensed yet nuanced rumination, personal and professional, poetic and haptic, participating and witnessing blur. This practice, the way of the Crane, is timely because it introduces relational pedagogy and testimonial teaching for our times—while touching the pulse …

Mapping The Legacy Of Cinnabar Mining In California's Santa Ynez River, Lorrie Blair

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This essay is a reflection of an artist residency focused on the environmental legacy of California’s cinnabar mining. The mineral cinnabar is a primary source of mercury that was used to mine gold in California in the 1800s, and is still used globally. For this residency, I asked, “How can I creatively map the emotional and sensory landscapes of Cinnabar mining sites?” “How can art making serve to expose elements of an ecological crisis?” To answer these questions, I created cyanotypes made in and with the Santa Ynez River, which flowed through two abandoned cinnabar mines. Cyanotypes are made by …

Teaching The Eye To Slow Down: Attentive Noticing As Ecological Practice, Sara Ko

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This visual essay unfolds through acts of careful noticing. Drawing from materials encountered through repeated walks across forested landscapes on Vancouver Island, it translates moss, soil, plant matter, and animal traces into immersive digital environments. Working through atmosphere, texture, and shifting forms rather than fixed representation, the project explores how perception is shaped by time spent with what is often overlooked. Digital processes are used not to stabilize or explain, but to hold uncertainty, fragility, and partial presence. The work invites readers to slow their looking and consider how learning, relation, and meaning can emerge through sustained attention.

Red Thread Projects For Placentary Peace, Nané Jordan

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Red Thread Projects are aesthetic expressions of my placental, eco-birthing philosophies as an artisteducator- scholar with lifelong roots reclaiming midwifery, and compassionate mother-centred birth care. Uplifting “birth” within embodied, feminist epistemologies, I aim to re-vision with the Mother, writ large and small. Since 1997, I have been creating textile artworks with red thread, activating these through performances in nature, where artwork, body, and place become interwoven texts, gifting gratitude to and with Mother Earth. My arts-centred research contributes to community education that empowers birth-givers, while advocating for the embodied, love-infused potentials of birth for human thriving.

Moving Forward: The Pulse Of Arts-Centred Research [Editorial], Darlene St. Georges

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Editorial

Artizein Editorial Team: Movements And Transitions, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Editorial overview of movements and transitions taking place with the Artizein editorial team.

About The Cover Art: Pulsing Renewal, Darlene St. Georges

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

“Pulsing Renewal,” featured on the cover of this issue, is part of River’s Invocations, a creation-centred inquiry exploring River's ecologies, relationality, and creation. The painting was chosen for its close affinity with the issue theme, The Pulse of Arts-Centred Research. The visual language of Pulsing Renewal—its movement, rhythm, and emergence—echoes the vitality, responsiveness, and ongoing renewal evident across the articles, artworks, and conversations assembled in this volume. The work is presented here as a thematic point of entry into the diverse inquiries that follow.

Full Issue_Artizein Arts And Teaching Journal, Darlene St. Georges, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Full Issue

Autism In Real Life: Performance As Pedagogy And Advocacy, Paula Horton

Honors Theses

This thesis examines how autoethnographic performance can function simultaneously as public pedagogy and disability advocacy through the analysis of Autism in Real Life, a solo performance created and staged at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Drawing from performance studies, psychology, sociology, and disability studies, the project explores how embodied storytelling communicates autistic lived experience to audiences unfamiliar with autism. The performance combines narrative, humor, direct audience address, visual media, and accessibility-centered theatrical design to move beyond clinical representations of autism and toward a relational understanding grounded in neurodiversity and the social model of disability.

Using an autoethnographic performance methodology, this thesis …

Performing (For The) Guru: A Performance Studies Approach To The Study Of Cults, Todd M. Brown

Dissertations

This project approaches a long-term experience of living in a cult through a performance studies lens. Utilizing autoethnographic methods, it explores personal insights and observations from years within the inner-circle of a coercive religious environment under tyrannical leadership. A variety of systems and relationships are narrated and analyzed according to three categories: ritualization, deployability, and occupation. Ritualization explains how a body becomes imbued with the rhythms and mantras of a cultic milieu. Deployability describes how this body is put into action at the service of the leadership. Occupation, as a metaphor, illuminates how a cultic subject becomes filled with the …

A Baritone's Soliloquy: The Extended Program Notes For A Baritone's Master's Voice Recital, Harrison C. Gilberti

Research Papers

Harrison Gilberti, for the Master of Music degree in Performance (Vocal), presented on April 3, 2026, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

TITLE: A BARITONE’S SOLILOQUY: THE EXTENDED PROGRAM NOTES FOR A

BARITONE’S MASTER’S VOICE RECITAL

MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. David Dillard

This research paper presents the extended program notes for the graduate voice recital of Harrison Gilberti which took place on February 28, 2026, at Southern Illinois University – Carbondale. The pieces presented on the recital were chosen from several styles ranging from oratorio arias to art songs and American musical theater selections. The pieces also reflected several time periods from …

The Developmental And Emotional Journey Of Bear Trap Garden From Proposal To Production, Mikayla Delos-Santos

Theses

Beginning with the conception of an idea and ending with a three-year reflection, this thesis outlines the creation of a full-length play: Bear Trap Garden by Mikayla Delos-Santos, which will have a production with the School of Theatre and Dance at Southern Illinois University Carbondale on April 23-26, 2026. Bear Trap Garden is a dystopian crime drama that takes place in a matriarchal society in the distant future. Emme, a bright and eager sixteen-year- old volunteers in the boys’ school. She meets Elliot, a boy who was raised outside the system by his mother, now dead, and his father, now …

Young William James Thinking, Vincent M. Colapietro

Dewey Studies

No abstract provided.

Echo’S Repertoire: Performing Science Fiction And Trans Care Models, Juniper Blue

Theses

Echo’s Repertoire is a mixture of a passion piece and a call for more work with performing science fiction. It focuses on interpersonal communication within trans studies and the experiences of transgender individuals and myself. Echo’s Repertoire is also an example of the Lyrical Model proposed by Awkward-Rich as a new model for trans affirming speech. The show is laid out non-linearly and follows along with Echo as he starts to build new relationships with the advice of his spaceship ai, Eep, who is a previous version of himself prior to transformation (transition).

Pinterest Can Help Teachers Cook A Casserole, But What About Lgbtqia+ Affirming Lesson Plans For Students Of Color?, Denise Villarrial Nealon

Deliberately Queer Journal

We have learned to be crafty homemakers, small space decorators, and even teachers through the eye-catching appeal of sites like Pinterest or Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT). The accessibility and ease of searching for a preset lesson saves time, and in a society where teachers are paid far less than what they are worth and asked to work longer hours than they are paid for, this makes sense. Using the theoretical frameworks of CRT, QueerCrit, and CRP, along with the concepts of intersectionality, can build learning tools for new teachers to disrupt previous exclusionary practices that prevent LGBTQIA+ students of Color …

Gender Knobs, Jordan Faye Bardgett

Theses

Gender Knobs is a performance art piece that tells the histories of both the technology surrounding pitch shifting devices like the vocoder as well as well as the personal history of the voice of the performer, Jordan, regarding their queer identity as non-binary trans woman. The performance is a combination of lecture, personal storytelling, and sound performance within a theatrical setting with musical accompaniment and projected visuals.

A Costuming Carol: A Costume Design Thesis On A Christmas Carol, Aleka Fischer

Theses

This thesis is a collection of research, analysis, design, and production work done for the costumes for A Christmas Carol. The play production took place in the McLeod Theater at Southern Illinois University from December 5th- December 8th, 2024. The play was written by Darwin Reid Payne and published in 1981. It is an adaptation of the novella A Christmas Carolby Charles Dickens. Chapter 1 contains the research and script analysis used to make design decisions for this production. Chapter 2 documents the design process, and how the costume design evolved between the first and final design meetings. Chapter 3 …

Jenifer Michaels. A History., Farrah Freibert

Publications

Jenifer Michaels was a legendary subcultural star within the gay liberation film milieu of 1970s Los Angeles. Taking three paths to approaching and interpreting Michaels’s filmic and archival image, this article is structured by an analysis of Michaels’s documentary appearances, her performance in sex films, and her statements published in a textual interview. Working against what I call historiographic gentrification, the article utilizes archival and micro-historical methods to think through Michaels’s subcultural stardom as a nexus for complicating biography, documentary, and the politics of veracity.

Scholarly Program Notes For "Songs Of Love & Loss", Seth A. Tanner

Research Papers

This document presents the extended program notes for the graduate voice recital of Mr. Seth A. Tanner which took place on March 1, 2025 in the Old Baptist Foundation recital hall at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. These extended program notes also contain the program of repertoire performed at the recital in addition to the texts of all pieces with translations for those non-English songs.

The repertoire list includes operatic arias from the Baroque and late Romantic periods, and art songs from the late Romantic period, early 20th century, and mid 20th century. The repertoire is representative of a …

The Feminine Perspective - Extended Program Notes, Madison Betz

Research Papers

This research paper is an extension of the program notes to the master’s recital entitled The Feminine Perspective that was given on November 15, 2024. The selection of pieces that are analyzed and described were performed in the order reflected in this paper. All piece selections feature a female composer and/or poet/librettist. In each chapter, one can find the content of the composer’s biography, background to the set or piece, and an analysis of each piece. The recital program included the following pieces:

Clara Schumann: Selections from Sechs Lieder aus Jucunde, Op. 23 (Nos. I, V, VI)

Lucy Simon: …

Scholarly Program Notes Based On The Graduate Recital Of Emily Wadley, Emily Wadley

Research Papers

No abstract provided.

Teaching Ettingerian Matrixial Theory, R. Michael Fisher

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Utilizing an adapted scoping review of the literature on Bracha L. Ettinger and Education (2008-2024), the author reveals the specific ways that Ettingerian Matrixial Theory (EMT) and its pedagogies are taught and can be taught in the future. EMT is argued to be a new branch of Critical Theory. The current literature shows there is mostly engagement with EMT in academic settings. As well, the literature reviewed shows EMT is used readily in arts and with artists as teachers and teachings for adults. However, the author unveils diverse other possibilities of teaching EMT. A few major themes from the literature …

Gestating And Co-Becoming With Ettingerian Maxtrixial Pedagogy, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article seeks to infuse and enrich the spheres of Arts and Education through a nascent introduction of Ettingerian Matrixial Pedagogy. To articulate this, I weave together the practices of Gestare Art Collective, which we describe as “matrixial infused education,” the “placental thinking” of Nané Jordan with my own thinking, art making and teaching. This article unfolds through interlacing theory and reflections on teachings found within art practices of Ma Poses, Womb Walking, Nap-Ins, and Spontaneous Creation-Making, along with examples of pedagogical artworkings: Metramorphosis and Muted Colours of Grief. The article closes with a poetic métissage inquiry that became—a Matrixial …

A Matrixial Museum: Education In Almost-Impossible Spaces, Valerie Oved Giovanini

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This paper is meant to scaffold an imaginary space for what is currently an almost impossible museum. It would reside on a border between Gaza and Israel. Artists and participants would be able to enter from both sides of the border into a circular and cavernous space to make, share and experience art together. In artwork that values its relational capacity to affect another, the move from aesthetics to ethics recalls our mutual place of origin understood in Bracha L. Ettinger’s Matrixial Theory (EMT) as “the matrixial womb.” Griselda Pollock’s Virtual Feminist Museum, Gur-Ze’ev’s counter-education, feminist pedagogy, and Art-care activism …

She-Hero: A Memoir Of The Divine Feminine Within A Creation-Centred Paradigm, Darlene St.Georges

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

She-Hero: A Memoir of the Divine Feminine within a Creation-Centred Paradigm explores Ettinger’s matrixial borderspaces through an inter-woven theoretical | artistic | poetic métissage. An example of creation-centred research, this memoir is likened to Ettinger’s concept of metramorphosis—an active restoration of matrixial knowledge(s) and knowing. Embodying a creation-centred curriculum and pedagogy, She-Hero privileges non-dominant epistemologies to attend to the disruption of historical patterns of the hero—inviting readers to submerge and emerge in co-poesis within an intimate and aesthetic kaleidoscopic space of feminine affect and agency.

Traces Of Communal Touch: Matrixial Encounters With Pre-Service Art Educators Across Two States, Kate L. Wurtzel, Laura L. Mccartney

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

The matrixial sphere, as put forth by artist and psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger, is a shared and transsubjective space that is beneath the conscious, under the touchable and perceptible; it is a space where we encounter ourselves and one another in shared trauma, healing, art making, and the lived experience overall. This co-authored essay explores how a shared matrixial space and the matrixial gaze, which is not always visual, have been experienced through the square boxes of ZOOM as part of a collaborative, long-distance art exchange project. The project, focused on Spontaneous Creation-Making (SCM) sessions, as outlined in Barbara Bickel …