Through a collaborative project centered on Book Arts, three professors from Visual Arts, Digital Culture and Design, and the University Library have engaged in collaborative, feminist pedagogy centering student’s embodied experiences as they engage in critical making. This presentation will detail the project’s activities, the underpinnings of bookmaking as a method to engage students with their embodied experiences, and open questions about the futures of bookmaking on our campus. Our project’s theoretical underpinnings align with the ways that handmade books have historically functioned in communities by empowering individuals to share their embodied knowledge and create cultural change. This work aligns with feminist pedagogy’s focus on community, co-creation of knowledge, and emphasis on embodied experiences. In keeping with this tradition, we taught students to see book arts as a resource for sharing their stories through instructional sessions that focused on research, process, techniques, and materiality. Students created projects that were deeply personal and employed techniques in ways that were collaborative, generative, and vulnerable. Students showcased their new knowledge through workshops centered on book making. Through library partnerships, we aim to create a longstanding special collection of artist books that will empower Coastal students to see themselves as knowledge creators.
Presenters: Loren Mixon, Coastal Carolina University, Meghan O’Connor, Coastal Carolina University