SSMF 2022: “Pause”

Pause & Pedagogy

How does pause re-shape what we think of learning and teaching? How is pause a creative force that can transform academic spaces as we know them? Informed by Disability Studies, and critical and multimodal pedagogies, this panel inspires the audience to think about how multimodality has the potential to challenge academic hierarchies, structures, and knowledges.

Moderated by Atenea Rosado-Viurques, University of Pennsylvania
Saturday, March 26, 11:00 AM — 12:25 PM Eastern

Panel Recording Coming Soon!

Interpreting Pause: Virtual Exhibition as a Teaching Tool

Alla Myzelev
SUNY Geneseo

Ilene Sova
OCAD University

The Covid-19 pandemic had tremendous effects on all of us around the world in different ways. From struggles at home to feelings of isolation, feelings of normalcy had been dismantled. With human contact existing through a screen, the effect of this pandemic has edged many people into a position of self-reflection. This, paired with the uncertainty of looking out at the ever-changing world around them, allowed for evolving perspectives. Together OCADU and SUNY Geneseo students developed an exhibition of self-portraits that reflects their struggles and realizations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alla Myzelev is an associate professor of Art History and Museum Studies at the State University of New York at Geneseo where she teaches courses in modern and contemporary visual culture. She has published on gender representation in the arts, activism, and material culture. She is currently writing a monograph on masculinity and fashion in the Soviet Union and is the author of Architecture, Design and Craft in Toronto 1900–1940: Creating Modern Living (Ashgate, 2016). Her edited collection of essays Exhibiting Craft and Design: Transgressing the White Cube Paradigm has been published by Routledge (2017). Her research interests revolve around gender and contemporary culture. She published and curated on DIY culture, fiber art and digital environment including a yearly exhibition of Feminist Art in Toronto (2014–2019).

Ilene Sova is the Ada Slaight Chair of Contemporary Painting and Drawing at OCAD University. Ilene’s painting practice focuses on social change with a feminist focus on creating a dialogue around anti-oppression. She is also heavily involved in the areas of arts advocacy, community activation, and promoting pluralism in the arts. In particular, Ilene has worked with both Harbourfront Centre and the Art Gallery of Ontario to do training in diversity and equity practices. This work was incorporated into the development, implementation, and delivery of arts curricula. Due to this work, Ilene was invited to sit on the board of Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario.
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⏸️ and ▶️

Multimodal Scholarship Working Group
Teachers College, Columbia University

This session is a collaborative research presentation to share how our group has been supporting engagements with multimodal approaches to research. Conceptualized as a “sandbox” where multimodal research and pedagogical inquiries play out, this presentation provides a glimpse into how our group serves as a supportive learning community and a playspace to share in-process work related to multimodal scholarship.

The Multimodal Scholarship Working Group (MSWG) in the Teachers College Media and Social Change Lab (MASCLab) is an interdisciplinary collective of graduate students and early career scholars from various programs and departments.
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Happiness Class

Samina Mishra

Happiness Class is a journey through the unique and fascinating world of children: their preoccupations, their worries, and most importantly, their idea of happiness. Set in the context of an experimental happiness curriculum inspired by the ideas of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and included as part of formal pedagogy in the schools run by the Delhi government, Happiness Class explores this landscape in schools and diverse neighbourhoods, with resident and refugee families, across the metropolis of New Delhi. Children speak of their fears, stresses and joys, parents talk of their aspirations for their children, and teachers share their pedagogic experiences in the context of the larger world. Using a range of simple and universal art exercises, the film engages in intimate conversations with children; and together with playful animation sketches the possibilities and challenges of ‘happiness’ being a subject in a school curriculum. In an increasingly competitive world, struggling with the challenges of conflict, segregation and polarisation, the film asks what the pursuit of happiness really means, and what role education can play.

Samina Mishra is a documentary filmmaker, writer, and teacher based in New Delhi. Her work uses the lens of childhood, identity and education to reflect the experiences of growing up in India. She also runs The Magic Key Centre for the Arts and Childhood, a virtual resource centre working with the arts in education.

Zong! Listening

Vallerie Matos
CUNY Graduate Center

For Zong! Listening, Matos will present a short presentation on the practice, politics, and necessity of erasure poetry. Matos will then offer a listening session of the audio component she has created to help concretize the ideas of embodied and decolonized listening.

Vallerie Matos is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center with interests in Sound Studies and Digital Humanities. She has an MA in Literature from Hunter College and a BS from New York University. Prior to the Graduate Center, Vallerie was a Program Director for an arts and social justice based youth development program for 5 years.