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Gli studenti saranno in grado di comprendere il ruolo dell'arte nel sensibilizzare e combattere la violenza di genere.

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Gli studenti impareranno ad analizzare criticamente opere d'arte che affrontano la violenza sulle donne.

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Gli studenti saranno in grado di collocare opere d'arte nel contesto storico e sociale della violenza sulle donne.

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Gli studenti esploreranno come l'arte contemporanea affronta il tema della violenza di genere.

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In che modo l'arte può contribuire a sensibilizzare sul tema della violenza contro le donne?

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Presentazione di opere d'arte storiche e contemporanee che trattano la violenza di genere.

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Graffiti artists in Brazil combat violence against women

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Gli studenti si dividono in gruppi per discutere l'impatto di specifiche opere d'arte.

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Studying gender-based violence through art: Voices of women students from India

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Ruchi Saini describes how an art-based approach to collecting data has aided her research into gender-based violence in Indian universities.

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Gli studenti scelgono un'opera d'arte e scrivono una riflessione personale sull'impatto sociale.

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Download the illustrated PDF version. (PDF) Español Meet the artwork. Quickly scan the artwork. What do you notice first? Type (check all that apply): Painting Drawing/Sketch Engraving/Lithograph Mural Sculpture Mixed Media Scene/Event Portrait Landscape Abstract Other What is the title? Observe its parts. List the people, objects and activities you see. PEOPLE: OBJECTS: ACTIVITIES: Write one sentence summarizing this artwork. Try to make sense of it. What do the colors, people, objects or activities represent?

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Esplorazione di artisti contemporanei che lavorano su temi di violenza di genere.

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Gender and sexual violence are persistent and long-standing issues that span across race/ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sexuality, ability, and geographic location. Throughout history, patriarchal systems and institutions, such as the family, positioned women as the property of their husbands and subject to his rule and discipline, and very few, if any, social services were available to domestic abuse survivors prior to the 1970s. (Summers & Hoffman 2002: xiii) Also problematic are rape laws prior to the 1970s law reforms that were embedded with sexist assumptions and doubt towards the seriousness of rape. (Bryden & Lengnick 1997: 1197-98) Furthermore, while themes of domestic abuse and rape had appeared in women's art prior to the 1970s, on the whole, these issues remained invisible in the public eye. Karen McIntyre comments that '[u]p until the 1970s, representation of abused women was rare in the public arena. Abuse was not discussed publicly, or if it was, it was from a medical, clinical perspective-what went on in the privacy of people's homes stayed there'. (2015: 64) One example of an early occurrence of domestic abuse in art is Alice Neel's 1949 painting . Neel paints her neighbour, Peggy, awkwardly leaning back against cushions gazing past the viewer with a bruised and cut face. A victim of domestic violence, Peggy later died of an overdose of sleeping pills. (Bauer 2002: 388) Japanese performance artist Yoko Ono's , first performed on 20 June 1964, at the Yamaichi Concert Hall, Kyoto, Japan, also touches on themes of violence against women. Seated in front of her audience with a pair of scissors placed in front of her, Ono invites audience members to come up one at a time and cut away a piece of her clothing to take with them. While the work has multiple interpretations (e.g., comments on WWII, remembrance, and memorialisation), also makes strong ties between women's bodies and vulnerability. (Bryan-Wilson 2003:103) As American and international feminist artists began to shed light on this hidden issue, works that abstracted the issue by removing the body became more prominent in visual art. For example, Suzanne Lacy, an early American feminist artist whose work dealt with the issue of rape, gradually moved away from the physical presence of the body in these pieces. One of her early performances that dealt with the subject of women's victimisation, (1972) (alongside Judy Chicago, Sandy Orgell, and Aviva Rahmani), was presented in June 1972 in Venice, California and involved a performance of images such as women bathing in eggs, clay, and blood while another seated woman is being bandaged. However, Lacy's subsequent works moved away from the body as an important component in challenging rape culture. Her 1972 artist book , provided textual descriptions of what constitutes rape and different forms of sexual, emotional, and physical harassment that women experience. Five years later, she produced Three Weeks in May (1977), a three-week-long series of events that brought attention to the high occurrence of rape in Los Angeles. This work was comprised of several components, including a large map of the Los Angeles area that was stamped with the word 'RAPE' in red ink on the approximate rape sites reported to the Los Angeles Police Department. (Kelley 1995: 236) In addition, the event included guerrilla-style activist art that marked out in white chalk the outline of a woman's body in the approximate site where a rape had occurred with the label 'A woman was raped near here...' (Kelley 1995: 237) In both the map and the chalk outlines, physical bodies are only referenced, and become abstract concepts in the issue of sexual assault.

Considering the complexity of the problem, it is clear we need a multidimensional approach to tackling the issue of gender and sexual violence. An important step in illuminating the complexity of abuse is to understand that victims/survivors will experience abuse and its after affects differently, depending on their social location (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, citizenship status, and ability) and relationship with social institutions. To do this work, intersectional theory, developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 'Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color' (1991), can be employed. In this seminal work, Crenshaw argues that people exist within several overlapping social locations (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, ability, socioeconomic class, sexuality, nationality, religion, and age) and are shaped by the interaction of these locations within social institutions (e.g., law, policy, education, family, media, and religious organisations). Through these interactions, individuals and groups experience privileges and oppression based on practices such as colonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, and ableism. In other words, any given social issue is a result of several different factors, and affected individuals will experience the issue differently based on their treatment by social institutions. Feminist artists of colour's work that adopts an intersectional lens can contribute to more complex depictions of the victim/survivor experience, and heighten their audience's awareness of the issue.

In the following pages, I examine contemporary feminist artists of colour whose work directly tackles the issue of gender and sexual violence through artwork that employs an intersectional lens. Specifically, I investigate the ways feminist artists of colour use their art to highlight people of colour's experiences as victims/survivors of abuse, involve the viewer in discussions of gender and sexual violence, and implicate social institutions that support abusive climates. Following my analysis of the artwork, I note directions for further research on intersectional visual art dealing with issues of gender and sexual violence. To conclude, I consider how feminist of colour visual art can contribute to social justice efforts in raising individual and community awareness of gender and sexual violence by educating the audiences on more complex and intersectional aspects of abuse, positioning the viewer as a witness to the artist's message, and transforming the audience's understanding of abuse. Such contributions help to further advance the understanding of gender and sexual abuse as an intersectional issue.
Feminist Artists of Colour's Intersectional Visual Art on Gender and Sexual Violence
Contributions from feminist artists of colour help diversify representations of victim/survivors that invite critical conversations surrounding abuse to include people of colour. Indeed, gender and sexual violence occurs across all genders, races, cultures, sexualities, economic classes, nationalities, religions, ages, and abilities. Chinese performance artist Li Xinmo is a 'controversial and rebellious feminist artist in the contemporary art scene in China, who bases her art on her painful experience, refers mainly to body performance and examines the relationship between performance and film, between performance and painting' (Xu 2012) and whose work involves 'protest and the propagation of personal ethics'. (Goodman) In her Feminist Photography Series from 2012, Li blends photography, digital manipulation, and text to create images that investigate Chinese women's feelings towards contemporary society and how, in turn, contemporary society views women. While some images depict a woman's anguish through a close-up of her screaming face, in other images she is quieter and more thoughtful. One photograph of a woman gazing at her reflection captures this more subdued tone. In the image, we see only the woman's hands holding the mirror that reflects one half of her face. Perfectly manicured hands contrast sharply with her battered reflection. The woman's head is placed into sharp relief by the black garment draped around her neck, which reiterates the mirror's black ornate frame and serves as both a point of contrast and a prison with which to encase her reflection. By featuring a Chinese woman as a victim of physical abuse, Li draws attention to the issue of interpersonal violence both within China and on a global level.

While drawing attention to the intersections of gender and race through her subject, Li's composition invites the viewer into the conversation on physically abusive relationships. The closely cropped image reveals little of the areas surrounding the mirror, except for the hands that hold it and a blurred, indistinguishable object in the background. The cropping forces the viewer to focus on the hands, whose long fingers lead us back to the face. The bruised face is slightly blurred, though not as much as the background, thus softening the angry red contusion on her mouth and developing bruise under her eye. Her expression is vacant and does not meet the viewer's gaze. Just to the right of her eye, the words 'I AM YOUR MIRROR,' in white type, trail vertically down her cheek. While the white hue of the text blends into the pale features of the woman's face, the words are jarring. 'I AM YOUR MIRROR' is a literal statement, since the words appear in a mirror. Taken figuratively, the words could, on one hand, reflect the woman's isolated state of victimisation, that which she may try to hide from others but cannot escape in her own reflection. On the other hand, 'I AM YOUR MIRROR' could reflect the audience's own involvement with an abusive relationship, either as a victim/survivor, perpetrator, or as witness to the abuse occurring in the photograph and in society.

The central placement of the mirror and close cropping force the audience to view the woman's face in a way that gives us the potential to experience this scene. The composition operates similarly to Edouard Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère , whereby the careful composition of the figures, mirror, and gazes casts the viewer into a key role in the painting. By looking into Li's photograph, we peer into a mirror that reflects society's position within the issue of physical abuse against women. Although Li's art comments on experiences directly connected to Chinese society, her image adopts a self-reflexivity of postmodern art that prompts us to consider the differences, as well as commonalities, between victims/survivors. Since gender and sexual violence is a global issue, this could be the story of a woman from any nation or culture.

While Li's and Searle's photographs freeze in time the aftermath of abuse in a single moment that audiences can contemplate, performance art enables the viewer to experience an artwork across a span of time. On 2 September 2014, American multiracial artist Emma Sulkowicz began their senior thesis piece, titled Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) . A victim of rape by a fellow Columbia student, Sulkowicz's performance was an embodiment of the trauma and emotional weight they were left with after the assault. The performance consisted of Sulkowicz carrying their dorm mattress, on which the rape occurred, with them wherever Sulkowicz traveled to on campus. The rules of engagement they set for the piece required them to carry the mattress on campus, store it in a safe place when leaving campus, and accept help carrying the mattress only if it was offered. (Mitra 2015: 386) Referred to as an endurance performance artwork, Carry That Weight consisted of several parts: murals on the wall of their Columbia University studio; objects, such as their mattress, mattress covers, and winter gloves; rule of engagement for the performance; public responses; and a diary. (Sulkowicz 2014)

Sulkowicz's own body bestows an intersectional lens to the work, which connects their assault to a specific person, place, and time. As a young, gender-nonbinary, queer, multiracial college student, Sulkowicz expands the typical gender binary associated with sexual assault and opens the conversation surrounding gender and sexual violence to include multiracial individuals and broaden the scope of locations in which abuse takes place. Sulkowicz's social location thus serves to invite a wider audience to personally connect with their work. In addition to their body, the mattress serves as a symbol and record of their trauma. A mattress, which usually signifies rest and comfort has been tainted through sexual assault, and now comes to symbolise the weighty trauma to which Sulkowicz is now tied. As Shayoni Mitra (2015) notes, 'The mattress, as externalised representation of pain cannot be last accessed as an archive of trauma unless it is activated by the gestures of carrying'. (389) Indeed, the act of carrying such a weight embeds this meaning within the mattress.

Carry That Weight touches on the physical, emotional, and temporal aspects of the aftermath of sexual assault. Physically, carrying around a mattress throughout their movements on campus is a challenging task. As Mitra comments, '[t]he mattress in Sulkowicz's project is heavy, awkward, and portable; an object chosen for its ungainly but solid dimensions'. (2015: 388) Not only can the mattress itself be unwieldy in its size and weight, carrying the object throughout campus, inclusive of tight and/or crowded spaces, up and downstairs, and through various weather conditions, makes the task more arduous. Emotionally, the performance serves as a constant reminder of their rape, and the marks that trauma leaves on one's psyche. Carry That Weight takes a private wounding and makes it visible to public audiences. Indeed, Carry That Weight demonstrates art's capabilities to do work outside of the traditional walls of a museum or art gallery. Sulkowicz not only performs the weight they continued to bear, but also with a high degree of vulnerability that is witnessed by numerous people at the university. Temporally, the performance was planned to last until their assaulter was expelled from Columbia's Morningside Campus. (Mitra 2015: 386) Dependent on the university's actions, Sulkowicz could have performed their piece for a day, week, or the entire academic year. Ultimately, their assaulter was not expelled, and Sulkowicz carried out the performance through to graduation, finally ending on 27 May 2015. In tying the performance duration to Columbia's course of (in)action, Sulkowicz indicates the direct role social institutions, such as the education system, has in addressing the issue of sexual assault. Such inactions indicate the educational institution's complicity in a culture that ignores sexual assault and silences victims/survivors.

On 29 October [2014], less than eight weeks later, an (Inter)National Day of Action was coordinated on this New York City campus [Columbia University] by activist groups like Carry that Weight Together, No Red Tape, Student Worker Solidarity, and broader women's rights and gender justice groups, including Hollaback and UltraViolet. Reports of the day stated that 130 schools across five countries, with the largest number of participants at fellow American universities, staged 'collective carrys' of mattresses and pillows, rallying around survivors of sexual and domestic violence. (2015: 386-87)

Thus, the groups that organised demonstrations also employed the symbol of the mattress, which helped the movement that Sulkowicz began to grow.

Raising awareness about rape and sexual assault through performance art with an intersectional lens is also the focus of Cherokee artist Luzerne Hill's 2012 performance Retracing the Trace , at the Fine Art Museum, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC. Like Sulkowicz, Hill draws on her own experience as a rape survivor to inform her performance that speaks to rape on a national level. At the beginning of Retracing the Trace , Hill lies on the gallery floor and has 3,780 red khipu style Incan knots poured on top of her body. Khipu knots were used by Incas as devices for record-keeping and communication. Rising from the khipu knots, Hill leaves an impression of where her body has been, similar to the mark of her presence in the park where she was assaulted in 1994. (Armani 2017) In the 60 following hours, Hill takes each individual knot and tacks them to the gallery wall to form a ring around the room. (Armani 2017) Like Sulkowicz's performance that employs a highly symbolic object, Hill is careful to recognise each knot, which in total represents the number of rapes that go unreported in the United States in one 24-hour period. Hill's performance is especially relevant given the increased vulnerability of Native women, who are three times more likely to be victims of sexual violence (90% of the time by non-Native men). (Armani 2017) In a similar vein, Métis Canadian artist Jaimie Black's REDress Project raises awareness of the more than one thousand missing and murdered Indigenous women of Canada, by installing red dresses in public spaces to signify their absence. (Black 2020) By adopting an intersectional framework, Hill's performance and Black's installations acknowledge many factors that impact victim/survivors' experiences of violence and abuse. As Alicia Gill notes:

due to complex, often antagonistic histories with varied systems and institutions, some communities are at higher risk of experiencing violence in their lifetimes and have a more difficult time accessing the life-saving resources they need to get and stay safe, and to heal. Survivors of colour and Native survivors, LGBTQIA survivors, survivors with disabilities, and survivors who live at the intersections of all of these identities often experience compounded instances and impacts of violence. (2018: 560)

Thus, when we take note of what Patricia Hill Collins (2000) refers to as the 'matrix of oppression,' sexism is made more complex through interactions with racism and colonialism to not only render Native women more vulnerable to violence, but also less likely to receive the institutional support needed to leave the abusive situation and heal from abuse.

In Sulkowicz and Hill's performances, the physical spaces that performances occupy add to the power of the pieces, and how audiences can view and/or participate in the work. Set within the gallery walls, Hill's performance is much more intimate compared to the expansive Columbia campus that encompassed that of Sulkowicz. Hill transforms the space through the act of pinning khipu knots to the gallery walls, and invites participants into a red-ringed contemplative space. Sulkowicz also enabled audience participation (those who volunteered to help them carry the mattress) and transformed their space by inspiring social justice groups to organise against violence and abuse. Thus, Sulkowicz and Hill demonstrate the importance of their physical bodies in relation to the audience and performance space in creating powerful works that speak out against sexual assault.
Directions for Future Research
Reflecting on the works discussed above, I note additional intersectional sites that can further diversify a visual dialogue on gender and sexual abuse, such as socioeconomic status and ability. Financial abuse inhibits a victim/survivor from leaving an abusive relationship and, because the intersection of race, gender, and economic class produces compounded oppressions, artwork that considers socioeconomic status can produce more nuanced understandings of abuse. In addition, people with disabilities are an especially vulnerable group, one that is often dismissed and ignored. Peggy Munson argues that ableism can enable gender and sexual violence. Emotional, physical, and economic forms of abuse inflicted on a victim with disabilities are often tailored to their disability and manifest differently than those typically understood by advocates and service providers. (2016: 50) Lacking knowledge of the ways disability impacts abusive situations often results in blaming people with disabilities for the abuse, or denying them services to leave abusive relationships. (Munson 2016: 49-50) Therefore, artwork that engages with these dimensions of abuse would give audiences a better understanding of people with disabilities' situations and the specific services they need. To further expand feminists of colour's visual articulations of gender and sexual abuse, I also note the need to include discussions on emotional and verbal abuse. Another prevalent form of abuse, one often involved in other forms of abuses/violence, emotional and verbal abuse is often under-recognised. This tendency also emerges in contemporary artists' representations of gender and sexual violence. To address this gap in the literature, future research needs to be conducted on the ways emotional and verbal abuse is explored and represented in visual art.
Feminist Artists of Colour's Transformative Engagement with the Audience
Each of these feminist artists of colour make a significant contribution to tackling the issue of gender and sexual violence by centering marginalised populations. In taking an intersectional approach that highlights people of colour, women, and nonbinary victims/survivors, the artworks call upon society to recognise individuals who face oppression in both their personal and public lives. Contributions from feminist artists of colour are important in building a more expansive and complex public understanding of gender and sexual violence that is both contemporary and inclusive. As a society enmeshed in visual culture, images that depict a range of victims/survivors, with regard to gender and race, can impact the way audiences view the scope of abuse. According to Gillian Rose, '[i]mages are important, it seems to me, not simply because, for some people in some places, they are pervasive, but because they have effects. In particular, they have effects in relation to the construction of social differentiation. Different identities, different subject positions, are reiterated, in highly complex ways, by visual images. (2013: 71) The visual component of depicting abuse is important in forming individual and community understandings of abuse. Karen McIntyre argues that in media, accurate representations of gender and sexual violence is necessary to expand the public's understanding of abuse. (2015: 64) Likewise, visual artists can play a role in shaping a more holistic understanding of this scope of violence.

Through composition, content, and medium, artists can compose images that affirm some victim/survivors' experiences and educate audiences on violence and abuse. Speaking of her own and other women's artwork on gender abuse, McIntyre argues that survivor artwork imagery holds the potential to communicate their message uncompromised:

Exhibiting these works has effected a social change greater than my one narrative, my one perspective. It has opened the door for many other women to disclose their own 'shameful' secrets, started a collective movement of art-making in response to violence (the Women's Art Initiative), and offered media publicity that has privileged the voices of 'victims' over those of other experts and spokespeople. All this from some paintings. (2015: 67)

For McIntyre, artwork can shift power into the hands of victims/survivors by enabling them to speak their truth. Thus, in the work of feminist artists of colour, content and imagery that is centred in marginalised groups' experiences can provide necessary opportunities for artists to speak of their intersectional experiences in a way that can resonate with viewers of colour who may not typically find their issues addressed in the general visual culture. For example, women of colour's artwork shared across social media can reach a much broader audience than artwork exhibited in a gallery, which has a much narrower audience.

Such efforts are necessary given that the public often does not know what constitutes abuse. A survey commissioned by Redbook and Liz Claiborne Inc. (2000 & 2006) reported that many Americans had only a partial understanding of abuse: 40% did not include hitting, slapping, or punching in a list of abusive actions and over 90% did not include repeated emotional, verbal, or sexual abuse as part of domestic violence and abuse. ('News Poll' 2006: 1) This gap in the public consciousness in identifying gender and sexual abuse makes it difficult for bystanders to know when and how to provide assistance. According to the survey, 64% of Americans stated that it is hard to determine if someone has been a victim of abuse, and 54% of Americans believed they may have witnessed IPV but did not act because they were unsure of what they were witnessing constituted abuse. ('News Poll' 2006: 1) As such, it is important to visually represent gender and sexual abuse in ways that discuss nuanced forms of abuse, and represent a diverse group of victims/survivors regarding gender and race. I argue that the feminist of colour artists discussed above help to diversify representations of violence and abuse in the global domain, and through their art/visual/storytelling help to define the dimensions of abuse. Expressed differently, their intersectional images reveal the scope of violence and abuse by giving voice to a myriad of victims/survivors.

Indeed, the audience's role as witness to these artists' messages is as important as the work itself. Audiences begin engaging with an artwork the moment they observe the piece. Response to a work may take many forms, from examining the work's formalistic qualities, making emotional or cognitive connections to the concept, or physically becoming part of the work. For instance, in Sulkowicz's performance, audience participation increased the power of Carry That Weight and galvanised further social action. Engagement with an artwork is valuable to social justice initiatives since, as Amy Mullin notes, 'when we respond to artworks, we focus on what the art reveals about ourselves as well as what it reveals about others. This may sound self-indulgent, but it can facilitate an increase in critical social consciousness by making us question simultaneously of our own socio-identities as well as those expressed or explored in the artwork'. (2000: 133) Therefore, while art can operate as a vehicle for an artist's personal expression, it also holds space for audiences to be educated and identify with the work.

Visual art can impact one's thinking; images can be used to reify problematic status quo ways of knowing, or to challenge existing notions. To use Patricia Leavy's words, this 'defamiliarisation' can prompt people to look at an idea in a different way and, thus, art is transformational. (2009) These properties may be unique to visual images: '[v]isual art can jar people into something differently. This kind of consciousness-raising, unleashed by images, may not be possible in textual form'. (Leavy 2009: 220) Thus, feminist artists of colour's contributions to building an intersectional representation of the scope of gender and sexual violence demonstrate the ways visual art engages in activist efforts by connecting with viewers in order to address social issues and potentially transform society.

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(Re)Marks of Abuse: Gender Violence in Art by Women of Colour

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Ishii investigates the ways feminist artists of colour highlight diverse victims/survivors' experiences of abuse to involve the viewer in the debate on gender and sexual violence.

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Monitorare le discussioni dei gruppi per valutare la comprensione degli studenti.

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Raccolta di feedback tramite una discussione di gruppo per vedere la comprensione del tema.

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Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

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In a recent New York Times opinion essay, University of Virginia senior Emma Camp asserts that she "came to college eager for debate . . . but found self-censorship instead." While there are subtleties and nuances, surveys do suggest that many college students censor themselves for a variety of reasons.

What can we as faculty members do to foster rich scholarly discourse? How can we create "safe enough spaces," as Michael Roth calls them, for better class discussions? How can we meet students where they are and help them improve their skills?

Finding a way is crucial. We know from research that diverse perspectives lead to deeper learning and better problem-solving but only if all voices are heard. To make the most of societal heterogeneity and avoid retreating into echo chambers, we must have better conversations. Simple encouragement, however, will not suffice. Instead, I suggest we draw upon decades of research on inclusive teaching to provide onramps for self-censoring students to merge into the traffic of scholarly debate.

Sources like Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill's The Discussion Book: 50 Great Ways to Get People Talking, James Lang's Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, and Peter Felten and Leo Lambert's Relationship-Rich Education provide many ideas.

From these and other sources, as well as my own experience, I highlight five techniques, all of which should be preceded by co-creating community guidelines with students on the first day of class. While some of the following techniques are designed simply to make students more comfortable with engagement, all can be leveraged to foster divergent thinking.

1. Warm calling

Barbara Walvoord taught me long ago to explain to students that we are going to try warm calling to get conversations started in our class. By contrast, cold calling is when the professor asks a question to a student at random, and without warning, to answer. Hot calling is when the professor calls on the student who raises their hand first, as Hermione Granger does routinely at Hogwarts. The problem with cold calling in most undergraduate classrooms is that it stresses out students. The problem with hot calling is that it ends up encouraging a few students to carry the discussion while letting most students hang back.

Warm calling requires the professor to give everyone the opportunity to think after asking a question. We might give students a chance to write for a minute, or we might give them a moment to consider their thoughts on their own before turning to a classmate to exchange ideas. This is their warm-up. Then, the professor must call on random students to speak. Usually, I ask at least two students from different parts of the classroom to start, and I let the warm conversation heat up by inviting students to raise their hands to offer their thoughts. Cathy Davidson shares her similar technique here.

If a student absolutely does not want to speak in front of the class, I do allow them to pass. In that case, I'd invite them to share their thoughts with me later via appointment or an email; we could then decide whether they'd like me to share it for them in some mutually agreeable way.

2. Half-formed thoughts

On the first day of class and in my syllabus, I share with my students R. Keith Sawyer's idea that the "best learning takes place when learners articulate their own unformed and still-developing understanding and continue to articulate it through the process of learning."

I tell them the story of how in contemporary American society, we tend to allow people in power (i.e. professors, CEOS) to think out-loud, but those with less power (i.e. students, employees) rarely get the chance to talk out their ideas. Instead, the latter must compose their contribution to a discussion in toto before they risk sharing it for fear of judgment or worse. I then explain that our class provides a chance for all of us to practice thinking out-loud and making meaning together. Most of the time, I hear a gasp of realization of this truth and a rustle of excitement as they begin to realize that it will be okay for them to try out their ill-formed questions and even half-baked notions in class.

I then take it as my job to help students clarify their questions and thinking and, when appropriate, offer a mini-lecture regarding points of fact, while also trying to get other students to build on one another's ideas. Admittedly, this strategy produces messy conversations that sometimes don't have clear conclusions. I warn my students about this and reassure them by saying that solving real problems requires experimentation, false starts, failures, and risk. We use class discussions to figure out the subtleties of a problem and try out possible approaches. I explain that each of us has the chance to practice producing linear, fully-formed arguments in our essay writing. In class, however, we have a precious opportunity to think out-loud together, one that, if practiced now, will serve them well in group settings in the future.

3. Doubting-and-believing squares

Alison Cook-Sather shared with me her technique of creating a 1×3 grid on a sheet of paper. The professor pre-fills the first box with a debatable statement like, "Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack" or "Letter grades support student learning." In the second box, every student must write for themselves a few reasons to doubt the truth of the statement. In the third box, they write a few reasons to believe in the statement. Whether they personally doubt or believe in the statement doesn't matter. This is an exercise in thinking through at least two sides of an argument.

Next, the professor goes around the class, perhaps from one side of the room to the other, asking for students to share reasons to believe. The professor writes these on the board in a column. If a student says that their idea is the same as a previous student's, it's still important to add a checkmark or underline on the board indicating their concurrence. One of the simplest ways to include all students is to make sure their contributions show up on the board. Afterwards, go around again, perhaps in the opposite direction, asking for reasons to doubt the statement.

Once all of the ideas are on the board, I usually ask students how the exercise felt. Inevitably, some will say that it was hard. They often admit that they never give thought to the side of an argument that they don't believe in themselves.

After this quick debriefing, we have a substantive conversation about the ideas on the board. Students normally feel safe enough to support or critique the ideas because they have been aired already and they are not personally invested in each idea. Of course, this is not the most organic way of having a debate, and I would not do it more than once or twice in a semester, but it does serve as an onramp.

4. Page-number lines

My colleague Christen Mucher and I devised this technique when we were team-teaching an American studies class a few years ago. That day, students were assigned to read pages 1-100. We gave each student a few blank Post-it notes and asked them a question such as, "What passage in this text perplexes you the most?" Of course, other and additional questions are possible like, "What passage, if any, made you laugh?" and "What passage do you find most illuminating regarding X?" Students would write a few words about their chosen passage on their Post-its without their names. Next, they'd attach their Post-its under a number line on the board stretching from 1-100.

We then asked, "What do you notice?" Inevitably, there are clusters of Post-its and a few outliers. Professors can then use these patterns to zero in on passages that students find confusing, illuminating, and so on. The Post-it comments initiate conversation, and we can then invite students to say more. It is important, of course, to touch on both clusters and outliers. It is also advisable to take photos of the Post-its and upload them to a shared Google photo album. This makes it possible to return to the Post-its should class time run out, and it has the side benefit of including everyone's ideas in a common archive.

5. Preparatory notes

I've written an essay for The National Teaching and Learning Forum about this technique. Briefly stated, this idea requires students to write an email to the professor ahead of class about what's on their mind. This requires time on the professor's end, but it enables an exchange that makes students feel seen and heard. Furthermore, it introduces the opportunity for the professor to invite a student to share their idea in class or to represent it for them anonymously should they feel uncomfortable doing so themselves.

The professor can also report on patterns or common questions. Sometimes, students think they're the only ones who don't understand something, yet often others have a similar concern. This technique enables students to share safely and for us as professors to address issues that matter to students that we may not have considered important ourselves. Additionally, sometimes a single student has a brilliant and/or controversial contribution or question that they may not have made or asked if we didn't encourage them to do so.

None of these techniques magically transform your class, but they do help create safe conditions for students to begin generating and listening to diverse ideas. Because any contributor might create a hostile environment, intentionally or not, it is best to be prepared. Learn Tasha Souza's ACTION response protocol, for instance. I also recommend Peggy O'Neill's critical conversations model.

Most of the time, we can move a class discussion from a promising start toward true scholarly debate. Soon enough, students might even begin sharing thoughts in a productive way without our scaffolding. May it be so.
Floyd Cheung is a professor of English and American studies, former director of the Sherrerd Center for Teaching and Learning, and current vice president for Equity and Inclusion at Smith College. References:
Adedoyin, O. (Mar. 7, 2022). Do students self-censor? Here's what the data tell us. Chronicle of Higher Education, https://www.chronicle.com/article/do-students-self-censor-heres-what-the-data-tell-us?cid2=gen_login_refresh&cid=gen_sign_in&cid2=gen_login_refresh

Brookfield, S., & Preskill, S. (2016). The discussion book: 50 great ways to get people talking. Hoboken: Wiley.

Camp, E. (Mar. 7, 2022). I came to college eager for debate. I found self-censorship instead. New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/opinion/campus-speech-cancel-culture.html.

Cheung, F. (Mar. 15, 2019). Preparatory notes as a way to individualize teaching and learning. National Teaching and Learning Forum, 28(3), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ntlf.30191

Davidson, C. (Apr. 8, 2012). Single best way to transform classrooms of any size! Hastac blog, https://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/2012/04/08/single-best-way-transform-classrooms-any-size

Felten, P., & Lambert, L. (2020). Relationship-rich education: How human connections drive success in college. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lang, J. (2021). Small teaching: Everyday lessons from the science of learning. Hoboken: Wiley.

O'Neill, P. (2017). Constructing critical conversations in the classroom: Creating change. Smith College School for Social Work, https://www.smith.edu/sites/default/files/media/Office%20Images/Sherrerd%20Center/Constructing_critical_conversations_10_6_2017.pdf

Page, S. (2007). The difference: How the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Roth, M. (2019). Safe enough spaces: A pragmatist's approach to inclusion, free speech, and political correctness on college campuses. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Sawyer, R.K. (2008). Optimising learning: Implications of learning sciences research. Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, https://www.oecd.org/site/educeri21st/40554221.pdf

Souza, T. (Apr. 30, 2018). Responding to microaggressions in the classroom: Taking ACTION. Faculty Focus, https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-classroom-management/responding-to-microaggressions-in-the-classroom/

Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. (2020). Co-created norms, https://wp.nyu.edu/recipesforteaching/2020/05/18/co-created-norms/

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Five Techniques for Better Class Discussions

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The following techniques are designed to make students more comfortable with engagement and discussion while fostering divergent thinking.

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Discussione di gruppo per riepilogare cosa è stato appreso e come l'arte possa influenzare i cambiamenti sociali.

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Leiden University - Faculty of Humanities

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Trailer: Minor 'Creative Strategies for a Society in Change'

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Ricerca su un artista che affronta il tema della violenza di genere e creazione di una presentazione.

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Artivism is all about change. Feminist artivism refers to artists who use their art as a form of feminist engagement and to activists who use art in their collective action to advance gender equality. Feminist artivism has been used in many different ways to shine a light on key issues, such as gender-based violence (GBV).

Created for this year's 16 days of activism against GBV, this photostory shares examples of feminist artivism against GBV. These examples are only a few drops in a sea of feminist artivism on GBV, but highlight how artivism spans communities, decades, and art forms. The examples aim to capture a wide spread of objectives, from engaging young people to tackling victim-blaming, and from disrupting taboos to supporting the recovery of GBV survivors.

We encourage you to click through the mini-galleries and watch the embedded videos to get a flavour of these powerful pieces of artivism.

Engaging young people through drama and arts - Mujeres en las Artes

Mujeres en las Artes is a Honduran organisation created in 1995 that promotes the arts and their use for social justice. In collaboration with the UN Women's Spotlight Initiative, Mujeres en las Artes has been using drama and visual arts to engage young people in challenging the harmful gender norms that perpetuate GBV and suggesting ways to end it. They have also organised art installations against GBV, such as 2021's Etymology of Absence, which asked the audience to reflect on gender roles and relations, learn about GBV and take action.

Battling against victim blaming - the Power of Priya Comics

The idea for the first Power of Priya Comic arose after the Nirbhaya case in 2012 - when a young woman in New Delhi (India) was raped by men on a public bus, resulting in her death. The first comic book, released in 2014, aimed to change the practice of blaming victims of sexual violence for their attacks through the voice of superhero Priya. There are now seven comic books in the series, as well as an augmented reality (AR) component and street art activities. The creators of Priya were awarded a Gender Equality Champion prize by UN Women in 2015.

Their most recent work, the comic book Kaia, was made in collaboration with the Foundation Natalia Ponce de Leon in Colombia and is based on the story of Natalia, the victim-survivor of an acid attack. The comic book aims to support the recovery of victim-survivors by providing hope that healing is possible.

Photos from the gallery taken by the author.

Fighting femicide through beauty - Siempre Unidas collective

Siempre Unidas is a feminist collective in the state of Quintana Roo (Mexico) that works partly through street art. In 2021, in response to the femicide of Victoria Salazar - a refugee from El Salvador who died in police custody - the collective began an anti-femicide mural project called RestaurAmoras. In the words of Tallulah Lines, a member of the collective: 'We have painted beautiful face after beautiful face of women killed by men; killed by boyfriends and ex-boyfriends mostly, but also by other men in their lives'. The project aims to provide symbolic reparation for the families of murdered girls and women: to honour and remember them, communicate support to their families, and to make GBV a more visible public issue. The collective always involves the families of victims, by seeking their permission and inviting them to be there during the painting and unveiling.

Disrupting the taboo around GBV - Hossna Hanafy's Women's Issues

Egyptian artist Hossna Hanafy produced Women's Issues (2019) with Tadwein Gender Research Center, as part of a joint campaign for women's empowerment. This series of visuals aim to denounce GBV and disrupt its simultaneous normalisation and taboo-like treatment. As in other pieces of her works, the series highlights GBV as a structural issue of public concern and invites us to imagine alternative narratives where society condemns such violence. Hanafy's work is also available on her social media account, where she has reposted her work in response to instances of GBV.

Poetry to challenge GBV from an intersectional lens - the Sari Red

Sari Red (1988), by Pratibha Parmar, is a visual poem in memory of a young Indian woman, Kalbinder Kaur Hayre, who was a victim of racially motivated GBV in the UK in 1985. Through her video, Parmar denounces and examines the ever-present threat of violence experienced by South Asian women - in both the private and public spheres - from an intersectional lens. She simultaneously highlights women's marginalisation in different contexts and points in time, but also women's active resistance to it.

Shining a spotlight on domestic violence - the Women's House (Sunglasses) project

Croatian artist Sanja Iveković started Women's House (Sunglasses) in 1998 in collaboration with a women's shelter in Zagreb and later with women's shelters elsewhere in Europe and Asia. Iveković organised workshops with women in these shelters to produce plaster casts of their faces, as well as to give them the space to write their life stories. Sanja superimposed testimonies from victims-survivors of GBV (domestic violence specifically) on advertisements for luxury sunglasses. The posters and plasters have been presented in indoor and outdoor exhibitions, and the posters have also been placed in billboards and newspapers, as a way of raising the visibility and public awareness of domestic violence.

Recovery through art - The Gunshot Incident

Chinese artist Xiao Lu participated in the China/Avant-garde exhibition in Beijing in 1989 with a piece titled Dialogue. The piece consisted of two life-size phone booths (the left one showing the back of a female figure and the right one showing a male figure), a mirror between the booths, and a red telephone on a white pedestal, with the receiver dangling down. On the day of the opening, Lu staged a performance in which she shot two bullets at the mirror. The work was inspired by a phone conversation Lu had with an old acquaintance of her family, during which she accused him of sexual abuse. The exhibition explores the (im)possibilities of dialogue between men and women in the context of GBV, as well as the therapeutic and empowering potential of art in recovering from past trauma.

Missing faces for missing girls - Peju Alatishe's fabric collection

Missing (2014), by Peju Alatishe, is a series of panels featuring silhouettes of girls against Ankara fabrics, in which some panels are themselves missing. The piece was made in response to the kidnapping of 234 girls from Chibok (Nigeria) by Boko Haram that same year. It aims to denounce both the violence enacted against these girls, as well as the failures of the Nigerian government in finding and retrieving them.

Photographing the hidden - Violence Unseen

UK photographer Alice Bruce collaborated with Zero Tolerance, a Scottish non-profit to end GBV, to produce a new version of the Violence Unseen campaign, launched for the first time in the 1990s and created by Franki Raffles. Curated into a mobile and online photography exhibition, Bruce's work aimed to explore and contest the lack of recognition and understanding of GBV in British society, highlighting that all women and girls can be subject to abuse. To produce the photographs, Bruce worked with a diverse group of women to ensure the work captured and represented - through its settings, gestures and iconography - their experiences, identities and daily lives.

A future free from GBV - The Tapestry from Pakistan is Red

In 2003-2004, Pakistani artist Farida Batool and Argentinian artist Graciela Ovejero collaborated in the making of a tapestry. Ovejero sent Batool a printed fabric with some of Ovejero's works, for Batool to do the same. Batool, however, ran a workshop with 13 women in Dastak, a GBV shelter home in Lahore (Pakistan), so that the tapestry captured their experiences and desires. The focus of the tapestry is on the desires and dreams for a better future of the women in the shelter (rather than their past experiences) was the result of the women's refusal to draw images related to their past and their wish to focus on their future possibilities instead.

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Check out @ALIGN_gender new #photostory 'From drama to murals: a visual journey of feminist artivism against GBV'.

#gendernorms #ENDviolence #16days #feministartivism #artivism

About the author

Diana Jiménez Thomas R. is a Senior Research Officer at the Gender Equality and Social Inclusion team at ODI. She focuses on social movements - particularly feminist and environmental movements. She works on a number of projects at ODI, including ALIGN, that relate to feminist activism, gender-based violence, and gender norm transformation.

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From drama to murals: a visual journey of feminist artivism against GBV | Align Platform

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Artivism is all about change. Feminist artivism refers to artists who use their art as a form of feminist engagement and to activists who use art in their collective action to advance gender equality. Feminist artivism has been used in many different ways to shine a light on key issues, such as gender-based violence (GBV).

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Ogni studente scriverà una breve riflessione su come una specifica opera d'arte, una canzone o un video li ha influenzati.

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Articoli e saggi sull'arte e la lotta contro la violenza sulle donne.

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Authors: Carolina Solano Gutiérez, Laura Márquez Ramírez

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How does artivism contribute to ending gender-based violence? | Align Platform

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Feminist art is everywhere: we find it in music, in theatre, in performance art, in the visual arts, in film, and in crafts. Feminism broke into the art world to challenge the prevailing biases that shape what we see as art, and who we see as an artist, and to strengthen the connection between arts and the struggle for social justice.

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Giornata contro la violenza sulle donne. Una riflessione coi capolavori della storia dell’arte

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Giornata contro la violenza sulle donne. Una riflessione coi capolavori della storia dell’arte

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Giornata contro la violenza sulle donne. Una riflessione attraverso le opere d’arte a tema

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Ricorre il 25 novembre di ogni anno, eppure dai fatti di cronaca è chiaro che la strada da fare ancora è tanta. E noi diciamo “basta” attraverso alcuni capolavori del passato

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Cortometraggio & Libro All’origine di questo progetto ci sono un cortometraggio di Federico Micali e prima ancora un libro di Giorgia Vezzoli. Buona visione! Guarda…

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Paola Cortellesi - David di Donatello 2018

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Il monologo di Paola Cortellesi - David di Donatello 2018

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cortometraggio - Contro la violenza sulle donne

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cortometraggio - Contro la violenza sulle donne

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Questo non è amore | cortometraggio - Contro la violenza sulle donne

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Uno sguardo a quadri e performance che fanno da testimoni a questa tematica.

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Uno sguardo a quadri e performance che fanno da testimoni a questa tematica.

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Le opere d’arte nella storia che raccontano e denunciano la violenza sulle donne

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Uno sguardo a quadri e performance che fanno da testimoni a questa tematica.

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Ermal Meta - Vietato Morire (Official Video)

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Ermal Meta - Vietato Morire (Official Video)

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Ermal Meta - Vietato Morire (Official Video) [Sanremo 2017]

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Ermal Meta - Vietato Morire (Official Video)

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Ermal Meta - Vietato Morire (Official Video)

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Ermal Meta - Vietato Morire (Official Video) [Sanremo 2017]

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Til It Happens To You (Official Music Video)

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Til It Happens To You (Official Music Video)

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Lady Gaga - Til It Happens To You (Official Music Video)

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Quale dipinto di Picasso è un simbolo contro la guerra?

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Quale dipinto di Picasso è un simbolo contro la guerra?

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Violenza contro le donne, il racconto dell'arte attraverso i secoli