Barbara Hogan at UMass-Lowell

Then the very next day...I am back in the same ballroom, listening to the remarkable Barbara Hogan from South Africa.  She was receiving an honorary doctorate from UMass-Lowell for her life-long struggle for the end of apartheid and the development of a free and democratic South Africa.

Again, here is an endarkened photograph of her in her robes:

 A member of the ANC, tried and convicted of high treason, jailed for 8 years, freed as apartheid came to an end, she went on to be part of the transitional government, then Minister of Health and Minister of Public Enterprises. 


This was a different kind of freedom fighter than the two women I had heard the evening before.  They demanded peace as women--refusing to take sides or arms; she participated in a political group that supported armed resistance (not terrorism as she carefully defined it).  She worked in an environment that had powerful racial issues to sort out, much different than the Liberian context.  However, the Liberian context provided an opportunity for religious differences to be bridged.  She also worked as an insider in a government that included men and women, whereas the women's movement in Liberia drew upon women for its numbers. 

In both cases there were lots of "lessons to be learned"--a great opportunity to compare two different and related cases of the search for peace, safety, and freedom. 

Again, I was so glad that UMass Lowell brought these speakers to campus. 

Leymah Gbowee and Janet Johnson-Bryant at UMass-Lowell

Sunday evening I attended this remarkable event. 

Sunday, April 10 - Pray the Devil Back to Hell
7:30 - 9:00 p.m.: Film and Panel Discussion
UMass Lowell Inn and Conference Center
50 Warren St, Lowell, MA.
Open to the public. Free. Refreshments will be served.

Faculty, staff, students and the community are invited to attend a screening of Pray the Devil Back to Hell and a panel discussion with two women featured in the documentary - Leymah Gbowee and Janet Johnson-Bryant.
Pray the Devil Back to Hell chronicles the remarkable story of the courageous Liberian women who came together to end a bloody civil war and bring peace to their shattered country.

Here's a very endarkened picture of the two with faculty member Paula Rayman:

I came away with a headful of new information and ideas.  I watched this documentary on the Liberian Civil War a few days after I had watched parts of Ken Burn's documentary on the American Civil War.  I am reminded of how little true chaos most Americans have experienced in their lives. 

I wanted to better understand the power of prayer--what was prayer and what was politics?  The shots of young boys leaning out of trucks, rifles in hands, reminds me so much of what has been going on in Libya and so many other unsettled places.  We feed on the youth. 

There were so many powerful ideas raised here.  I am so glad UMass-Lowell brought these women to campus.  

The Beginning of My Artist's Statement

For the most recent newsletter of the Center for Women and Work, I was asked to write about the role of creativity in my life as an academic--how does creativity serve me personally and professionally.  Here is that statement.

My creative endeavors lie in the arena of fiber and mixed media.  From childhood on, I have been interested in fiber in all its forms – weaving, basketry, sewing, knitting, crocheting.  Several years ago, I discovered felt—one of the most ancient of human fiber forms-- and in doing so found a home base for my creative activities.  Felt draws on all my knowledge of fibers and their unique characteristics.  The process of felting is akin to paper making and ceramics, and felt itself can be marked upon like cloth or paper.  The possibilities seem endless to me. 

            Bringing this artistic interest in closer alignment with my ‘real job’—as a reading specialist, literacy researcher, and now qualitative research methodologist—has been a project of many decades.  Only in the last few years have I been able to formalize the relationship between the hands-on maker and the thinker/writer through the development of  ‘The Journal Project’, a study of an 18 month period of my personal journals that blends qualitative research software, arts activities, and autoethnography.  This project central to my work as a Faculty Associate at the Center for Women and Work. 

            Fiber work connects me to the deepest places in my soul.  It allows me to make tangible the issues of meaning making that are at the heart of qualitative research.  The characteristics of fiber—color, texture, twist, feltability—become tools for expression.  Fiber allows me to honor the process of inquiry, playfulness, spirituality, and the value of making.  With the culmination of ‘The Journal Project’, I am creating an art exhibit that presents felt in the context of discussions of qualitative research methodology, allowing these two powerful sources in my life to join forces.  

River:  A piece that will be shown at the International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry:  May 2011

Interior Conversations:  Technology, Art, and Qualitative Research

Judith Davidson, Ph.D.

Graduate School of Education

University of Massachusetts-Lowell

Judith_Davidson@uml.edu

Women at the Well Gathering:  2011

Qualitative research is a social science approach grounded in unstructured, non-numerical methods.  A hybrid of anthropological and sociological approaches, it has gained increasing acceptance in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.  In the last quarter of the 20^th century, qualitative research has been the site of two competing strands of interest: 1) a humanistic approach nourished by interests in the arts and literature; and 2) a focus on qualitative computing tools.  These two approaches have, for the most part, continued on parallel but separate tracks into the 21^st century. 

As a qualitative researcher with interest in both strands, I have been hard put to find a way to integrate the two, causing serious tension for me as a researcher.  It was this tension that led me to develop “The Journal Project” in which I undertook a qualitative research study that would build a bridge between autoethnographic and arts-based approaches and qualitative computing tools.  The Journal Project was a study of 18-months of my personal journals during the years of 2006-2008.  My goal was to examine these materials making full use of qualitative computing tools and arts-based methods of reflection.  I wanted to show how arts and computing can play a role in every stage of the interpretive process. 

In this small exhibit I focus on two of the art works that have emerged in response to the Journal Project:  “My Diagnoses” and “What Happens When You Drop Your Socks”. 

Interior Conversations:  Technology, Art, and Qualitative Research is the tentative title of the book that is emerging from this study. 

My Diagnoses:  (Upper Left Hand)

My diagnoses is a mandala shaped felt crafted from three natural colors of Navaho churro, a primitive sheep brought to the Americas by the early Spanish.  I like its historical ties and its rough quality.  On a white background, I needle-felted the numbers of my diagnoses in dark brown churro:

300.04:  Dysthymic Disorder—a medium level depression lasting a minimum of two-years or more.

309.81:  Post-traumatic stress/chronic. 

These numbers are jumbled in the center…and sorted out around the rim.  In between winds a circuitous path of light brown churro that works its way from inside to outside. 

Interior Conversations probes the lived experiences of these diagnoses over the period of 2006-2008. 

The felted piece is displayed against a piece of cotton hand-dyed with bits of old metal using India Flint’s eco-colour method.  I am interested in the tension between felt, the most primitive of textile methods, with woven, manufactured cloth. 

What Happens When You Drop Your Socks (Far right)

During the period of the journal study, I married my husband Bob,.  As this screen shot from the NVivo E-Project demonstrates, there is significant material devoted to discussion of Bob in my many journal entries.  

In contemplating what would best symbolize the good and the bad of the experience of intimacy referred to in 118 entries I was reminded of Bob’s habit of dropping his socks by the side of the bed.  This led to the creation of a piece of felt in which Bob’s socks are embedded as if they were growing out of the dark wood of the floor by his bed.  The felt is displayed on a background of homey lace figures, which are themselves displayed against a beige floral background.  The words “What Happens When You Drop Your Socks” are written in handcarded, hand-dyed, hand spun yarns that I created.  I liked the whimsy of the handspun that formed the cursive letters.  Again, I am exploring the tension between the primitiveness of felt and the machine-perfect quality of today’s woven cottons.  

In contemplating what would best symbolize the good and the bad of the experience of intimacy referred to in 118 entries I was reminded of Bob’s habit of dropping his socks by the side of the bed.  This led to the creation of a piece of felt in which Bob’s socks are embedded as if they were growing out of the dark wood of the floor by his bed.  The felt is displayed on a background of homey lace figures, which are themselves displayed against a beige floral background.  The words “What Happens When You Drop Your Socks” are written in handcarded, hand-dyed, hand spun yarns that I created.  I liked the whimsy of the handspun that formed the cursive letters.  Again, I am exploring the tension between the primitiveness of felt and the machine-perfect quality of today’s woven cottons. 

Gathering at the Well 2011: UML Center for Women and Work

April 7, 2011
One of the most inspiring days I've spent on campus.  A group of about 40 gathered at the UML Alumni Hall for a morning of intense thought about "Women as Makers:  Creativity at Home, and in the Community".

 The speakers were fantastic.  We started with a panel "Crafting Our Lives Together"

Diana Coluntino, Artistic Director of the Revolving Museum, started us out.  She showed her work as a hat maker--forms, methods, materials, styles--and talked about the work of the Revolving Museum.  In their new space, they can serve many audiences.  The Revolving Museum has done much to build community in Lowell for adults and young people.  (Here is Karen working at her crocheting--a later task in the day.)

Karen Akunowicz, Culinary Program Manager/Chef of Fresh Roots at UTEC was the second speaker.  I haven't had the chance to try out their wares--but I've heard many people talk about this program.  I didn't realize that UTEC students farm an acre at Richardson's Farm and are also involved in the Farmer's Market here in town.  Karen spoke to the ways cooking is a creative force in her life, her experiences learning the craft in Italy, and the transition from high end restaurant chef to working with youth who have encountered multiple challenges.

The third panelist was Betty Burkes, Curriculum Coordinator, of "Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools".  Betty, a founder of a Montessori School on Cape Code,  former leader and board member of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and a UN consultant on peace education--shared with us her history of learning about making peace in different local and international contexts, the most recent of which is New Orleans.  At the conclusion she led us in few verses of "This Little Light of Mine". 

To practice making, Sarah Kuhn, program organizer, led us in learning how to crochet hyperbolic planes.  I learned that I could teach crochet...and I came up with a way of describing how you hold the yarn to sustain tension.  [Sarah is on the left, trying to teach crochet via the large screen.] 

The piece de la resistence of the day was the presentation by Mary Catherine Bateson...she spoke to her earlier work "Composing a Life" and the newest work (which I purchased and had signed)..."Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom".  I was intrigued by the way she connected her metaphor of "composing" to the earlier notions of the women's movement...and now to her later work and concerns with longevity.  

The program was brought together by Sarah Kuhn, now of the Psychology Department at UML.  Throughout the program a powerpoint loop of the crocheted coral reef that has been on display at the Smithsonian played on a large screen.  Sarah took the pictures,  and they were a great backdrop to the ideas of the day.  It was a brilliant choice!  Sarah is a leader in "Thinking With Things".  She founded our campus IDEA group on this topic...she is also the founder of our Interdisciplinary Lab (another place to think with things).  In this event she was definitely leading with her strengths. 

We finished the day with a special small tour of the Interdisciplinary Lab.  Several of the invited guests got to explore the lego collections.  (Mary Catherine Bateson, Betty Burke, and Julie Bernson--Education Director of the Addison Gallery). 

What was particularly exciting for me was that I was invited to share some of my felt pieces as part of an exhibit of the creative work of women on campus.  I will post the "paper" in the next blog entry. 

Meg Bond, Director of the Center for Women and Work and her great staff--were around, behind, involved in all the pieces and getting things to go smoothly. 

I have been an Associate at the Center for Women and Work for the last two years and this event was yet another reminder of how valuable the center is to me and others on campus.  It was so great to have a day of intellectual play like this.  I am renewed.  Thanks everyone. 

Mary Catherine Bateson at University of Massachusetts-Lowell

Image via WikipediaThe UMass-Lowell Center for Women and Work will be hosting their annual "Women at the Well" gathering tomorrow.  The theme is creativity, and our keynote speaker will be Mary Catherine Bateson.  I have my copy of "Composing a Life" ready and waiting for an autograph. 


I am very very pleased to have been asked to share some of the works that are emerging from my journal project...now tentatively titled "Interior Conversations:  Technology, Art, and Qualitative Research". 





This is the second time in the last week, I've trotted my items out.  Last week I shared items with my art class at the Essex Art Center.  Here is a photo of those pieces on display. 

For tomorrow I will be showing the piece on the upper left and on the far right.  These are some of the pieces that will compose the exhibit that I will be showing at the International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry.